


Fallout Equestria: Waters of Life

by Redoctober1995



Category: Fallout (Video Games), My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adult Content, Blood and Gore, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Dark, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-02-18 03:22:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 44,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21870931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redoctober1995/pseuds/Redoctober1995
Summary: This is my hand at a Fallout Equestria fan story, this is by no means meant to be seen as canon to Khat's amazing 600,000 word plus story.Water is a constant struggle of life in the Equestrian Wasteland and that certainly rings true in the flooded city of Baltimare and the Horseshoe Bay.Iron Slug's life in his home stable, Stable Fifty-Two, was one of consistency with no real problems. That all changed when his mother, Iron Rose, abruptly gives her son a gift and then escapes leaving Slug without a reason. Suddenly, one day Rose's gift tells Slug how she escaped and Slug follows his mother into the harsh reality of Equestria.
Kudos: 4





	1. Prologue

**Prologue**

_"Do you really think that history will remember it that way?"_

Hello.

I’m writing this because...well, I don’t know why I’m writing this now.

Maybe all of Velvet Remedy’s insistence about recording the past to protect the future has finally gotten to me. Maybe Equestria’s slow recovery has finally started to give me some hope.

Or maybe I’m just bored of my work and this felt like an understandable way to pass the time.

I’m not expecting you to know my name like the Stable Dweller herself and my story might not be as grand of a scale as saving Equestria.

But according to Velvet Remedy, “While history might remember that heroes are born in fire, it is the privilege of smaller ponies to light those flames.”

Hmmm...maybe that’s why it took me close to a decade to write this.

My name is Iron Slug and this is my story.


	2. Stable Fifty-Two

**Chapter One: Stable Fifty-Two**

_"What do I want... I don't really know..."_

Gray walls.

That was my life in Stable Fifty-Two and the walls of my bedroom were a particularly clean shade of gray. A testament to my boredom.

The annoyingly grating beep of the alarm on my PipBuck ripped me from my dreamless sleep and after a couple of swift wacks against my bedside table, it shut it off. I begrudgingly rolled off of my bed and slowly dragged myself to stand. I stretched my sore body before entering my bathroom, I flicked on the flickering light and looked into the cloudy mirror, a Unicorn stallion stared back at me with what ponies told me was my most distinctive trait, my pink eyes. I flicked off the lightswitch and walked over to my dresser and levitated out a folded Stable suit before I headed for the showers.

Stable Fifty-Two was built by Stable-Tec nearly two hundred or so years ago, no pony really knew because the computer that kept track had malfunctioned a number of times and often wouldn’t be fixed for weeks or even months. The Stable was the home of just about ninety Unicorns and Earth ponies all surviving on very limited resources and the population was dropping rapidly every generation, massive sections of the Stable had been abandoned and left to decay in neglect for decades as there just weren’t enough ponies to maintain everything.

I lived in Living Quarters Charlie, it was the second least populated section with just a dozen elderly ponies choosing to remain after their foals had moved on and gotten married and had families of their own. For whatever reason, there were still ponies living in Living Quarters Delta, it was closest to the surface. Security didn’t even bother going that far up anymore and most of the rooms had trace amounts of radiation leaking in from the surface.

In Stable Fifty-Two, there were just under a hundred jobs that hadn’t been abandoned yet and a couple dozen of those jobs were held by parents and given to their foals. In the rare event that a foal developed a cutie mark that didn’t match their parent’s career then the foal was often ostracized by their parents and treated as though they didn’t exist. Goddesses help the foal if they received a cutie mark that they were meant to work in Recycling.

My own cutie mark is a bullet with a magnifying glass, so I work in Maintenance while Mom’s cutie mark is a scalpel with a black rose, so Mom was the Head Doctor for Stable Fifty-Two and given how many ponies were injured daily, it was of little wonder Mom was almost always tired. She even slept in her office these days.

I yawned loudly as I stepped into the shower room, because of the Stable’s limited resources the showers were unisex, as the mare’s shower room had been broken since Mom was a filly. Maintenance barely had the parts to maintain what little we could anymore, every pony was expected to behave themselves and any sexual activities in public spaces were strictly forbidden.

So, perhaps, dear reader, you’d probably understand that I was caught slightly off guard by the scene inside, an Earth pony stallion was busy pushing a Pegasus mare against the blue tile wall under a shower. I recognized the stallion as Dipper, a nurse from the Medical Wing and the mare as Velvet Cake, she was the only Pegasus in the Stable and worked in the Cafeteria. Dipper was fucking Velvet under him and Velvet was moaning throatily, clearly enjoying the activity. After nearly a minute, Dipper grunted and Velvet screamed inaudibly until Dipper covered her mouth with his hoof and jizz seeped out from Velvet’s crotch.

‘Dude,’ I thought, ‘Step up your game.’

I cleared my throat and knocked my hoof against the doorframe and mentally laughed as the couple stumbled to cover themselves and they both fell ass over elbows on the gray tile floor.

I chose my shower stall and turned on the water, recoiling when freezing water hit my outstretched arm. 

“FUCK!” I yelped as I pulled back my arm.

“Yeah,” Velvet muttered as she stood up, “The heating talisman must not be working today.”

I braved the water and quickly washed my shaggy mane. When I finished I dried myself off and pulled on my clean Stable suit. Before I left, I looked over to the embarrassed couple.

“If you two get to your shifts right now, I won’t tell any pony about this breach of protocol.”

They muttered their thanks as I left to see Mom. Honestly it wasn’t really worth my time to report them to Security, Officer Crosshairs wouldn’t really care anyway.

Something that Mom told me once years ago trickled into my thoughts, “Get yourself a nice mare and give me some grand-foals.”

I shook my head to quiet Mom’s voice, I couldn’t see myself holding down a serious relationship and forget about foals. I didn’t get along with other ponies.

The Medical Wing was on the same level but on the opposite side as the Atrium. There were just five ponies in the whole Stable who had medical cutie marks. I opened the door and was greeted by the ear splitting screams of a pregnant mare on a bed giving birth. Mom was propped up between the mare’s legs with her nurses running around getting her supplies.

“You’re doing fine, Merrigold,” Mom said calmly as the mare kicked out and struck a nurse square in the muzzle, “And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t harm members of my staff anymore.”

After ten minutes or so the stallion from the showers came in and started helping.

“Dipper, glad you could grace us with your presence,” Mom commented.

The stallion glanced at me nervously, “Sorry, Doctor Rose, the showers are slow today.”

“You’re working over lunch for that,” Mom muttered as another nurse handed her clean towels.

The stallion nodded.

“Ok, Merrigold, one final big push!”

The mare screamed and soon the room was filled with a foal’s cry.

“It’s a filly!” Mom declared.

“A filly?” the mare asked weakly.

“Yes,” Mom muttered as she wiped down the newborn before handing it over to the mare, “A healthy screaming newborn filly.”

Mom noticed me and trotted over, “Sixteen hours, for a while there I thought I’d need to cut it out of her.”

I nodded, noticing that the quarantine area was occupied. A scrawny looking Earth pony colt was sitting on a stool and a nurse wearing a hazmat suit was shaving him down.

“Security brought him up from Recycling a few days ago,” Mom explained taking notice, “No idea what Rusty Nail’s gonna do with him.”

I nodded, if the colt came from Recycling, then there was a good chance that they’d take him back down there. Mom motioned to her office and I followed.

Mom was a middle aged Unicorn, her once dark cyan mane and tail now had long streaks of silver and her green eyes no longer held their original brightness. Her office was covered in experiments, most of them dealing with cleaning water. I looked up at the compressed air rifle mounted on the wall behind Mom’s desk.

“You haven’t come by to see me for some time, Slug,” Mom said as she sat down behind her desk, “May I ask why?”

“Do I need a reason to see you Mom?” I asked incredulously.

Mom and I had a weird relationship as far as families in Stable Fifty-Two went, Mom almost never seemed to be proud of me. Growing up, Mom seemed to be more interested with her research than with me, she only noticed when I got my cutie mark because Overseer Rusty Nail had her dragged out of her office to attend the ceremony. I also didn’t know who my Dad was either, Mom never bothered to tell me.

“Since you’re here,” Mom said as she opened her desk, “I have something for you.”

She pulled out a small gray lockbox. The lockbox was a little bigger than the size of my hoof and was a little too light for its size and had no discernible way to open it.

“What is it?” I asked looking over the lockbox with suspicion.

“Something I should’ve given to you years ago,” Mom answered flatly as she looked over her notes.

“Are…” I started, “are you doing alright?”

Mom looked down at her notes and didn’t say anything for a while.

“Mom, you aren’t planning anything...crazy, are you?”

Mom still didn’t answer, I was about to give up when she sighed.

“Do you still remember what I told you when you got your cutie mark?”

“Yeah,” I answered.

“Good,” Mom said with the faintest sense of appreciation.

I took the lockbox and left for the Cafeteria.

The Cafeteria was in the Atrium and was the heart of the Stable, half of the Stable’s population could fit in the large room. Six large concrete pillars were made in what I always saw as a sick mocary of pre-war trees held up a ceiling painted to resemble what the sky was supposed to look like. The walls were painted with scenes of happy families playing in a field of green grass with a happy sun overhead. Instead of the scorched hellscape of balefire radiation and monsters that lived in the skeletal remains of Equestria.

Yeah, I’m a joy to listen to.

I got in line for food and saw Velvet Cake, she had cleaned herself after the showers, I offered her a wink and she blushed like a ripe tomato and focused on something else. I grabbed a bowl of fresh apple slices and carrot sticks from the Stable’s Gardens and grabbed a glass of clean water before I headed for an empty table. I placed the lockbox next to me and after eating for a while, a Unicorn mare sat down across from me.

“Hey, Slug,” the chipper voice of Cobalt broke the silence, “You doing anything tonight?”

Cobalt Shield was in Security and her aunt was actually Officer Crosshairs. Both her dark blue mane and tail were cut short and her light gray coat contrasted with her orange eyes. Her cutie mark was a dark blue shield with a golden Fifty-Two on it. We’d known each other since we were foals and she was the first in our class to get her cutie mark. I was the last.

“Why?” I asked past a mouthful of apple, “Did you have something in mind?”

“Actually yeah,” Cobalt placed her hoof over mine, “I was thinking we could spend some time...together.”

I swallowed my apples and thought it over, “Ok, I’ll see you here tonight.”

Cobalt smiled and kissed my cheek before getting up to leave for her shift.

My room in Maintenance was rather small with five workbenches lining the walls. When I was just a colt there were only four elderly ponies here that taught me everything they could. Now after ten years, I was the only pony in the whole Stable that could repair any of Security’s guns. I looked at the gun schematics that were taped to the walls, every firearm that Ironshod Firearms had ever developed for the Final War before the Last Day.

Hard Knock taught me how to read the old schematics and how to make sense of them, Rapid Switch taught me how to dissemble the guns used by Security, Diamond Drill taught me how to clean them of any grease build up and Slam Fire taught me how to use the guns incase Security got too bold.

But one by one they died until it was just me.

And I was their legacy.

I sat down at my workbench, placed the lockbox beside me and dug out my tools from my toolbox. As Stable Fifty-Two’s only gun repair pony, Security tended to be rather impartial to my activities and they tended to leave me alone. I had set up my tools in the way I liked and looked up as my shop’s door slid open.

“Iron Slug,” Nimble, a Security Earth pony too skinny for his armor stepped up to my workbench, “Did you finish the repairs on my pistol yet?”

“Just last night,” I lifted up the parts of the IF-21 pistol, a 10mm pistol made over two hundred years ago by Ironshod Firearms for Stable-Tec, according to the schematics book that I had at my disposal.

“The recoil spring was bent at a weird angle,” I explained as I reassembled the pistol part by part, “There you go.”

I handed over the finished pistol to Nimble and he cocked the slide back and pulled out a magazine to put in it.

“Great work, as usual, Slug,” Nimble holstered the pistol, “You stopping by the game tonight?”

Many ponies in Security had a habit of playing poker games after their shifts, it technically wasn’t strictly on the records, but Officer Crosshairs didn’t actually tell the Overseer about them.

“Cobalt wanted to spend the evening, sorry.”

“Right...right,” Nimble nodded, “Well, thanks for the work.”

Nimble left the room without another word. It was another hour before my door opened again. I had finished with three more pistols, I looked up again and saw my boss, Ms Copper Hammer, an elderly Earth pony mare with a silver streaked brown mane and tail and cloudy green eyes, her cutie mark was a copper colored sledgehammer. Ms Hammer was the Head of Maintenance and no pony in the Stable dared to disrespect her. In her prime, she saved the Stable dozens of times over single-hoofed.

“Ms Hammer,” I stiffly stood up from my work, “What can I do for you?”

Ms Hammer waved her hoof dismissively, “Do have a seat, Dearie.”

I sat back down in my seat and I noticed the colt standing behind her.

“Whose this?”

Ms Hammer pushed the colt from the Medical Wing toward me, he had no mane or tail and his closely shaved puke green coat still faintly smelled of stale urine despite the smell of cleaning soap, his blue eyes were looking around terrified.

Ms Hammer smirked, “As of today, he’s your apprentice.”

I looked down at the colt and saw that his cutie mark was a rusted bullet, “You can’t be serious.”

“Now, now,” Ms Hammer waved her hoof dismissively, “You know the rules, Dearie.”

With that Ms Hammer left, the colt stood very awkwardly. I placed my face in my hooves and after a few minutes I glared down at the colt, he was still standing there very awkwardly.

I pointed at one of the spare chairs in the room, “Grab a chair and pull it over.”

The colt flinched but obeyed, he climbed up and kept his eyes glued on my table.

“What’s your name again?” I asked a little too gruffly.

“S-S-Scotch,” the colt stammered, “Sir.”

“Do I look like an adult to you?” I muttered as I started to clean another pistol.

“N-n-no,” the colt stammered as he sat there awkwardly.

“Look, kid,” I muttered as I placed my tools down and turned to the colt, “since we’re going to be working together, then I suppose we should get to know each other.”

“My name’s Iron Slug,” I extended my hoof, he took it after a while, “Which Living Quarters are you from?”

“Well…” Scotch temedly started and after what felt like a full minute continued, “My folks are still in Recycling.”

“Right,” I said with a little embarrassment.

Recycling was the unspoken section about Stable Fifty-Two, due to our limited resources nothing could be wasted no matter how minuet. I had never been in the sector myself, but Mom told me that the air itself reeked of despair and endlessness.

Whatever that meant.

After twelve hours and ten more pistols fixed, my shift was over and I took Scotch up to the Cafeteria and treated him to some diner and a nice slice of apple pie. I didn’t like kids, but I had to admit that Scotch took to the guns easier than I had at his age, he’d be perfect. Scotch scarfed the pie down like a wild beast and I felt a little sorry for him. He sheepishly admitted to me that his great grandparents had been involved with the Disturbance.

The Disturbance was the most harrowing event in Stable Fifty-Two’s history, the Overseer had been weak then and a couple hundred ponies tried to break down the Stable’s Door make it out to the surface. Security tried to calm the rioting but things went tits up and the riots were put down with lethal force, nearly every sector had been hit by the riots in one way or another. The Overseer had even been killed by the riots and in the aftermath the Stable’s resources had been split by two thirds. With resources scares and fearing another Disturbance, the sector heads created Recycling. Nearly all of the ponies in the sector were the descendants of those original rioters that had been packed down in the damp rotting corridors and rooms of the lowest levels of the Stable.

According to Scotch, Recycling didn’t get any electricity and all of the ponies inside used magic to see in the dark. Interestingly, despite Security almost never going down there, violence was rare in the sector, Scotch explained that Recycling had a collective mindset to atone for their ancestors’ mistakes. He told me about his parents, his mom was the sector’s teacher and his dad was the Head of Recycling and they were immensely proud of him for getting to leave.

I sat silently listening when some pony came up and grabbed me from behind.

“Hey Slug!” Cobalt cheered as she kissed my cheek, “Ready for our date?”

Cobalt looked over and saw Scotch, who was licking his plate now, “Who’s he?”

I cleared my throat to get Scotch’s attention, “Cobalt, this is Scotch, my new apprentice. Scotch, this is Cobalt Shield.”

Scotch temedly squeaked a quiet, “Hello.”

“Oh, Slug,” Cobalt squealed as she trotted around the table to hug Scotch gaining the attention of a few tables, “He’s so adorable.”

Scotch, to his credit, weathered the tight embrace rather well.

Later that evening after we finished eating, Cobalt decided to show Scotch around the Stable. He was stunned by the Showers and Laundry Wing, he explained that in Recycling they never wasted water to clean themselves. We showed him the Living Quarters, the Gym, the Gardens, though we could only look in through the windows to avoid contaminating the fresh crops. We were rounding the corner to the Medical Wing when we were stopped by a large crowd outside blocking the corridor. Cobalt and I pushed into the crowd as I held onto Mom’s lockbox with Scotch following close behind me.

“How did she leave?” “Why would she abandon us?” the hushed questions filled the crowd.

“I didn’t think the Door could be opened.”

What door? Who opened the door? Who were they talking about?

“Please, stay calm everypony!” the booming voice of Officer Crosshairs could be heard over the crowd, “I have the tag of every pony in the Stable, we’ll find the doctor by the end of the day no problem!”

I stopped in my tracks causing Scotch to bump into me and only one thought was in my mind, ‘Mom was gone?’

Cobalt grabbed my hoof and pulled me forward.

“Who are..?” the voice of Officer Crosshair asked from above me.

I looked up was almost muzzle to muzzle with the Stable’s Head of Security.

Officer Crosshairs was easily the largest mare, hell the largest Earth pony in the Stable, standing a full head and shoulders above nearly everypony else. Her dark blue mane and tail were starting to gray at the edges and her light blue coat matched her Stable issued armor. Her black eyes narrowed down at me like I was a roach to be squished.

“Auntie,” Cobalt thankfully drew her attention, “What’s going on?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Officer Crosshairs replied, “But why do you these two with you, Sweetie?”

Sweetie was probably one of the last words I’d have thought to come out of the hulking Earth pony’s mouth and it sounded very off-putting. 

“We’re ah...showing this colt here around the Stable,” Cobalt said pointing a hoof at Scotch.

“You,” Officer Crosshairs pointed her hoof at me, “You’re Doctor Rose’s son, aren’t you?”

Before I could nod, she grabbed me roughly by my collar and dragged me into the Medical Wing Cobalt stayed behind with Scotch holding Mom’s lockbox as the doors closed locking out the crowd.

There were a few ponies in Mom’s office, the Head of the Sectors and Overseer Rusty Nail was sitting behind Mom’s desk. I looked above Mom’s desk and saw that Mom’s compressed air rifle was missing.

“Ah,” the Overseer said as he stood up, “The buck of the hour.”

Overseer Rusty Nail was an elderly Earth pony stallion, he had a long white mane, tail and coat and his eyes were blood red, his cutie mark was a bloody red nail. According to Mom, he had albinism. When I was a colt I always thought the Overseer was rather scary and now was no different.

“You’re Iron Slug, yes?” the Overseer asked as I was seated in front of him.

“Yeah…” I started.

“Perhaps...you can inform us of your Mom’s whereabouts,” the Overseer smiled like a predator about to kill its prey.

I shook my head, the Overseer’s smile faintly thinned, “Surely she would’ve told her son, her only family, where she would’ve gone?”

I shook my head again. The Overseer was visibly getting frustrated, but he still kept his smile. He wordlessly nodded to Officer Crosshairs.

A sharp pain erupted in the back of my skull and stars filled my eyes. I rubbed the spot and looked behind me, Officer Crosshairs had struck me.

“Look, I don’t fucking know where my Mom went!” I shouted at the Overseer and the Heads of the Sectors, “She didn’t tell me a fucking thing!”

“He’s telling the truth, Nail,” Ms Hammer spoke up, “We all knew Rose, how often she’d be in her own mind doing her little experiments.”

The other Heads nodded in agreement and the Overseer looked down at me again.

“I apologize for that...unfortunate outburst, Iron Slug,” the Overseer smiled sickeningly as he patted my shoulder, “Can you forgive me?”

Before I answered the Overseer told Officer Crosshairs to take me back to my room.

I placed the lockbox in my dresser and sat down on my bed, Cobalt decided to give me some space to collect my thoughts, she had taken Scotch to find him his own room. I had my PipBuck’s radio on and I was half listening to the two hundred year old music loop of Classical and Jazz. To be honest, I wasn’t really sure how to feel about Mom’s disappearance at first. I almost went about my usual schedule like a machine for a few days, Cobalt and I went on our date and after we had sex I had to sneak out of her apartment when her aunt unexpectedly dropped by to check on her and Scotch was adapting to life in the Stable steadily having made a couple of friends and his skills with cleaning was sharply increasing, he even cleaned his first pistol for Officer Crosshair herself. I had almost forgotten about the lockbox and after nearly two weeks I was sitting on my bed when I heard a distinctive clicking sound.

I sprang up and looked around for my room for the source, looking over to my dresser I noticed a very faint glow leaking from the bottom drawer. I got up from my bed and opened the drawer, the lockbox was unlocked and the lid was slightly open. I lifted it out carefully and placed it on my bed, I opened the lid and honestly I didn’t know what I was seeing.

It was a colorless orb, about the size of my hoof and it was emitting a faint glow and a faint humming sound. 

I had a very bad feeling about the orb, why did Mom think to give me this...thing?

After looking down at the orb for a long while, I picked up the orb with my hoof and lifted it up to my eye level. The orb was impossibly light for its size...almost as if it was made of thought.

I noticed a note was underneath it,

_My Slug,_

_By the time you’re reading this note, if I’m successful, then I’ll have escaped the Stable for fourteen days and not in a cell in Security._

_I know that I haven’t been the best mom as I really should’ve been to you and I’m not asking you for your forgiveness, but I am asking for you to at least know why I had to leave. The Surface, the Horseshoe Bay is dying and I have a good idea on how I can heal it._

_This orb will hopefully explain more._

_Please stay in the Stable if possible, be safe, have a loving family and forget about me._

_I love you, Son._

_Mom_

The orb continued to hum and glow, I reached out with my magic.

And the world went black.

I don’t really know how to explain what it felt like, I suppose it felt like I was dreaming, but at the same time it felt too real. I opened my eyes and found I was still in my room, but I couldn’t hear my radio anymore. 

Instead, I heard a voice in my head.

_“Obsidian Rose, it’s been some time hasn’t it,”_ I didn’t recognize the voice, it almost sounded female but it was pretty deep and had an accent to it that didn’t belong to any pony in the Stable, _“If you’re finally listening to this then you must know that it’s time, I am eternally thankful, my dearest friend.”_

Who was this Obsidian Rose? Was she one of my ancestors?

_“If all has gone according to plan, I hope to see you again where we agreed too. Now I doubt that Stable Fifty-Two’s Overseer will just let a mare of your medical and scientific skill leave, so I managed to recover some information that you might find useful.”_

There was a long pause before the voice continued.

_“The emergency override code for Stable Fifty-Two’s door is...CMC3BFF.”_

Sound flooded into my ears again and the Stable’s music loop continued as if nothing had happened.

I must’ve replayed the message thousands of times over in my head. I turned off the radio on my PipBuck and stared at the gray walls of my room for what felt like the whole night, I came to a few conclusions.

Mom had lied to me.

I knew how Mom escaped.

I had the code for the Stable door.

I could leave.

I could go find Mom.

Outside.

I had written Cobalt and Scotch a note to explain what I was doing and quickly gathered a small saddlebag of meiger surplus and now I stood there, staring at the huge steel gear shaped door guarding out the horrors of the Outside from getting at the Stable. There was also a Security officer guarding the door. The Overseer didn’t want any repeats.

But I couldn’t stay in the Stable, sooner or later, Officer Crosshairs would find a reason to arrest me and the Overseer would probably banish me to Recycling.

I stepped up to the guard, he stood up from the chair he was sitting on and brandished his pistol in its holster.

“Evening, Snail,” I greeted the officer casually, my horn glowing softly with pink magic.

Snail was a particularly slow minded Earth pony, he often couldn’t even tell which way to aim his pistol.

“Get on out of here, Slug,” Snail muttered, “Overseer don’t want nopony near the Door.”

“But Snail, if the Overseer doesn’t want anypony near the Door,” I said trying to distract him, “Why do you get to be near the Door?”

Snail nearly took a full moment before he was about to answer…

THUD!

But the metal footlocker I was levitating above him dropped on his head, he crumpled to the floor. I quickly checked to see if he was alright and found he was still breathing fine and would probably have a massive headache when he woke up.

“Sorry, Snail,” I muttered under my breath as I unhooked his holster and took his pistol and two spare magazines, I stored the magazines in my saddlebag.

I was about to enter the code. I was about to leave the Stable and enter whatever was waiting for me outside. Even if I didn’t really have the best relationship with Mom, I still needed to find her because...because...well, even if she might’ve been a little shitty as a mom, she was still my Mom.

“Stop!” Rusty Nail’s voice boomed over the intercom, “I order you to stop!”

“Fat chance,” I muttered as I put in the code.

“All Guards get to the Stable’s Door! Kill that stallion if you have to!”

Shit!

I flew my hooves against the switch, prayed to the Goddesses that the code still worked and slammed the switch forward.

One second...two seconds...three seconds...

I was about to reenter the code again when a thunderous banging filled the room, drowning out Rusty Nail as jets of boiling steam shot out from the machinery and the room rumbled causing parts of the room crumbled to the floor. The massive bolt that held the door in place slowly screeched inward as a worn metal arm swung out from the side and grabbed the bolt. There was an ear splitting screech as metal scraped against metal as the door was pulled out from its place and rolled to the side out of the way.

I stared in awe at the empty space that the door had taken up seconds before, despite what I’d just done, I still couldn’t believe it.

“Slug,” Rust Nail’s voice filled the room again, “Don’t make the same mistake as your mom did.”

I stepped over the threshold and the door began to roll shut again, it was halfway across when a dozen guards broke through the door and for the briefest of moments, Cobalt met my eye.

She held her pistol at the ready, but she hesitated for what felt like minutes before she fired a single bullet at me. I felt the heat from the bullet on my cheek as it flew past and hit something behind me.

Just before the door closed, I saw that tears were rolling down Cobalt’s cheeks and she mouthed a single word, ‘Why?’

I only hoped that she would find the note and the orb before Security did.

With a deafened hiss and clang, all of my neighbors, Scotch, Cobalt and the only world that I’ve ever known, Stable Fifty-Two, was irrevocably shut away from me.

I closed my eyes and saw Cobalt’s tears, I betrayed her.

But, I had to find Mom and she had almost two weeks on me.

It took me a long time before I finally had the strength to slowly turn around and see the outside.

Honestly...I couldn’t say what I had expected the Outside to look like, but this space didn’t feel like this was it. No, this room was different somehow, it felt like the filter rooms near the water talisman room, sickeningly damp, cold and the stifling smell of algae and rotting wood. 

I flicked on my PipBuck’s flashlight and recoiled at the dozens of skeletons of long dead ponies littering the tunnel’s floor. The outside of the Stable’s door must’ve been marred by the hooves of the ponies trying to get inside.

Away from the Surface.

Moving carefully, I made my way across the tunnel and found a ladder made of rotting wood and a horizontal door in the ceiling with an open padlock.

Mom always had a way with lockpicks.

I pushed the door open and saw that I was in a room with walls made of cinder blocks and a cement floor. There were a number of rotting wooden crates and rusty drums. So the entrance to Stable Fifty-Two was disguised to look like a storage room.

And by disguised, I mean the room probably was a storage room before the Final War of the Last Day.

Fucking lazy, Stable-Tec.

Taking a few deep breaths, I looked up the stairs leading up to the outside and the surface.

I wasn’t getting anywhere standing here and I couldn’t go back to Stable Fifty-Two.

I summoned my strength, trotted up the stairs and swung open the door.

I stepped out into the Outside.

But I wasn’t quite outside yet, instead I was standing in a room similar to the basement, the room was mostly bare with a couple of rotting crates beside the door I entered from and the skeleton of a Unicorn dressed in an old overcoat of drab green wool and a black flat top hat slouching in a swivel chair beside a rusted office desk tucked into the corner, there was a rusty revolver lying on the floor beside the skeleton. Gray light was faintly trickling in from the blocked off windows about head height up the wall across from me beside a metal door with faded paint. On the wall was a very old poster, or at least I think it might’ve been a poster, it was too faded to read.

I looked over the desk and found a piece of torn notebook paper,

_My Slug,_

_If you’re reading this then you must’ve accessed my memory orb and decided to ignore what I wanted for you, or Crosshairs and Rusty Nail didn’t give you a choice and you had to flee._

_It doesn’t matter._

_Please get yourself somewhere safe and start your new life there and forget about me._

_I have my own part to play and I need to do this alone._

_I love you, Son._

I put the note in my saddlebag and looked at the door, did Mom really want me to find safety? Or did she want me to find her out there?

I dug through the rest of the desk but it was empty.

“Sorry,” I muttered an apology to the skeleton before I started rummaging through his long coat,

I found a small cardboard box and a photo in its pockets.

I looked over the photograph, it showed four ponies, a Unicorn mare wearing the same overcoat and hat, a Pegasus stallion wearing weird black bug-like armor, and two elderly Earth ponies, a stallion and a mare. I assumed the Unicorn was the skeleton and the other ponies were her family. I flipped over the photo and saw a hoof written note,

_Pound,_

_If you’re somehow reading this then you somehow survived the bombs. Celestia, it’s been twenty years now, but I still hear them when I try to sleep. I keep staring at this fucking statuette of Aunt Pinkie, I feel like its mocking me for believing in her. How could she fucking do this to Equestria?_

_I keep looking at my dog tags, forty fucking years wasted in the Army and the rank of Sgt Major just to foal sit a fucking hole in the ground. Most of my troops have gone AWOL, I don’t think I can handle this much longer._

_At least Corn Kernel is safe in the Stable._

_I’m sorry Mom and Dad._

_Pumpkin_

I looked at the skeleton again, there was a hole in the side of its skull. I picked up the hat and placed it back on the skeleton’s skull.

“Thank you for your service, Sgt Major Pumpkin Cake,” I awkwardly said to the skeleton, “You do have family down there in Stable Fifty-Two.”

I slid opened the box and found ten cartridges sitting inside, the box had a faded logo on the front, _‘Cherrypickers, when only the best will do.’_

Below that was what I guessed was the number and caliber for the cartridges, _‘20, 357 Magnum.’_

I picked up the revolver and looked it over, there wasn’t too much rust on it, I could buff that out pretty easily and the cylinder still spun, but the hammer hung open loosely, the spring must’ve been broken.

“You don’t mind if I have this, do you?” I asked the long dead soldier, who of course didn’t answer.

I pulled the poster off the wall and wrapped the revolver in it before storing it and the bullets in my saddlebag.

I sighed deeply and looked at the door again before pushing it open.

**Level Up:** Gun Nut: You can repair any pistol or revolver so long as you have the proper parts.


	3. Freedom

**Chapter Two: Freedom**

_"I'm sure it'll be useful later."_

Nothingness…

That was the first thing of the outside I saw when I opened my eyes.

I started to panic for nearly a minute before I realized that my PipBuck’s flashlight had shut off for some reason and my eyes slowly started to adjust to the darkness. Stable Fifty-Two’s lights would occasionally flicker, but they would always come back. There was also the constant distant humming of the generator and the Stable’s air usually stayed at a reasonable temperature. This was very different.

There was a coldness to the air, it sunk into my coat and chilled my skin, it bore smells to my nostrils that were cold and damp and dusty and very alien. There was also the distant sounds of insects, but I was more interested by the sounds I couldn’t hear...the hum of the Stable’s generator and the whine of the lights, I’d heard them for so long that I’d thought the Outside was silent. I felt dirt and small stones under my hooves, so unlike the floors of the Stable proper that I’d trotted my whole life. I flicked my flashlight on again and felt a little foolish for having never seen true night before.

But then an entirely different panic broke my brain and made my legs give out from under me, shining my flashlight up I saw an endless swirling mass of gray clouds as far as I could see. It felt like my stomach was about to claw itself out through my throat.

I clenched my eyes and rolled over in the dirt so I wouldn’t have to see the emptiness and lose my diner. After what felt like an hour, the uneasiness slowly faded and I regained the use of my legs, I didn’t dare look up at the sky but I could at least stomach looking around the area.

I was in a courtyard with two crumbling buildings, the building I came from was built into the side of a steep mountain and half of the second building had collapsed. Despite the fact that there didn’t seem to be anything too remarkable about the site, there were nearly two dozen pony skeletons coming from a knocked over rusted gate in the outer chain link fence surrounding the complex. I looked around the courtyard and noticed just a few of the skeletons had helmets and curved plates of rusted steel that looked similar to the barding of Stable Fifty-Two’s Security but these suits seemed like they were designed to provide better ballistic protection. The armored pony skeletons had lumps of rusted metal beside them in the dirt, some of the rusted lumps resembled IF-64 assault rifles and a few looked like IF-84 riot shotguns, but all of the guns looked far too damaged to be of any use to me. I looked around at the other skeletons and briefly wondered if they were ponies trying to get into Stable Fifty-Two like the ones inside the tunnel.

I heard a ping from my PipBuck and looking down at it, I noticed that it was open to the MAP section and had labeled my location as, _Stable Fifty-Two._

I looked at the screen with slight confusion, “How did you know that?”

Of course, my PipBuck didn’t answer.

I turned back to the buildings and looked down at my PipBuck, there were a couple of signals from radio transmissions, but Stable Fifty-Two’s signal sat dark. I flicked on one of the signals and a series of beeps faintly trickled from my wrist before I shut it off again, I blinked a couple of times before I noticed the faint ticking and looked down at the screen again, the radiation detector. A feature of my PipBuck that I had never looked at before, the little rainbow dial was ever so slightly edging from the green section towards the yellow section.

I looked out at the horizon line and noticed that the shades of gray of the world were starting to lighten somewhat in the past few minutes alone.

Perhaps Celestia still rose the sun.

I thought for a moment about what I was going to do. I couldn’t go back to the Stable and I couldn’t just stay here for the rest of my life. I also didn’t fancy my chances at finding Mom by simply walking in any direction, especially considering the fact the she’d had almost fourteen days worth of a head start. And I wasn’t getting anywhere by standing here.

I walked over to the collapsed building, perhaps there was a map that I could at least look at to get some bearing or maybe supplies that I could take.

I opened the door and looked inside, the air was full of dust mottes where my flashlight shone and the walls were crumbling but still holding up so I stepped inside the abandoned building and closed the door behind me. The first room had a few cots in rows each with a chest at their feet. I walked between the rows and looked through the chests finding nothing of use, one cot had some old moldy pornographic magazines under it. The second room had a couple of toilet stalls and a few showers and lockers, I looked through the lockers, but they were all empty save for a few packs of moldy cigarettes and clipboards and a pristine coffee cup. I was about to leave when I noticed a faint glow coming from the last room, I peeked inside and saw the glow was coming from a terminal on a rusty desk, a device of arcane science just like the ones used through Stable Fifty-Two. I sat in the chair and clicked the on button and to my amazement, the screen lit up, when Stable-Tec built something, they built it to last.

The files on the terminal were all corrupted save for one, an audio recording.

_“Look, I don’t a fucking shit what the Sgt Major...something out in the swamp! Why else would these inbred fuckers be trying to get into the Stable!”_ a gruff voice shouted through static.

I turned off the terminal, left the building and stood by the collapsed gate staring down at the near endless swamp that stretched out below me. It wasn’t out of the question that there could be animals down there, mutated by radiation. I shook my head, it didn’t matter, I needed to find Mom. I took my first step and trotted down the road.

Daylight.

By the time I reached the edge of the swamp, the sun had crested the horizon and filled the world with sickly light. I had never seen true sunlight before, and I suppose that I still hadn’t as the sun was hidden behind the rolling clouds above me. The swamp was even bigger up close than it looked from the mountainside. The _‘trees’_ , I use that word _very_ loosely, looked nothing like the trees from the pictures in the books back in Stable Fifty-Two’s School. These trees were blackened, knurled and twisting at odd angles with stilt like roots keeping them out of sickly green water on either side of the road. The millions of leaves blocked out the sunlight, creating a canopy of shadows on the broken road and the air itself was cold and damp and reeked of decay. I looked down at my PipBuck, perhaps there was a different way around the swirling blackness in front of me, but of course there wasn’t.

Well, there was, but it would’ve taken me a week and involved crossing a massive river that might’ve been flooded and I had to find Mom as quickly as possible.

I pulled out my pistol and readied the magazines in the holster belt, even if I couldn’t kill any of the creatures waiting for me inside I could at least beat them off enough to get away.

Hopefully.

“Here goes nothing,” I muttered to nopony in particular as I entered the swamp.

It was close to midnight when I stopped to rest and honestly my body would probably be screaming at me if I weren’t so damn tired. The swamp was even worse than it seemed from the outside, it felt like the dampness was soaking through my Stable suit and into my coat and small flies kept biting at me and being incredibly annoying. Despite the discomforts I was facing, the swamp was still interesting because there were a lot of animals wandering around. I saw what looked like an Opossum with multiple legs and three tails climbing around in the looming branches above me. I came across what looked like a pre-war beaver, except it was nearly ten feet long, covered in thick greenish brown fur and had two long yellowish brown teeth nearly as big as my head with several smaller tusks jutting out from its muzzle at odd forward angles, the giant beaver was gnawing on a tree which collapsed across the road, the beaver slowly waddled up, grabbed the fallen tree and dragged it into the marshy water and deeper into the swamp. I also had to shoot a couple of bloated bats, I didn’t kill either of them but I did wound their black leathery wings which made them fly away. I honestly thought I was in pretty good shape, but then again, I had never walked so much in a single day. I looked down at my PipBuck’s map, I’d probably gone a third of the way and I still hadn’t seen anypony. I was looking around to find a place to sleep for the night when I heard something large restle behind me and a very hard thing smack against the side of my head.

There was a splitting pain in my brain as I came too and I could feel a heat source at my back and cold damp earth seeping into my side. Slowly, I opened my eyes and looked around, I was laying on my side in a clearing, there was a trail of black smoke drifting up to the black rolling cloud cover above me. I shifted my hooves around but they were caught in something, I looked down and saw my wrists and ankles were bound in duct tape.

“Hey da perdy colt’s ‘wake,” a thickly accented voice cackled from behind me.

I was sharply turned around and was face to face with the ugliest pony (if I could even call my assailant that) I had ever seen in my short life. The entire right side of his head was covered in massive cancerous cysts and lumpy glowing boils that ran down under his heavily patched flannel shirt and denim jacket down his lumpy shoulder and swollen arm to his swollen forehoof. His mane, tail and coat were all very mangey and it looked like he had lice and hadn’t bathed in months, his beedy sickly yellow eye glared down at me and he gave me a deeply unsettling grin of only a few black teeth and rancet cigarette breath made me want to gag.

“Looks like yous ‘ite, cousin,” the mutated pony slurred back to another equally ugly mare (again, if I could even call her that) sitting on a log beside a campfire. The mare was impossibly lanky with knobbly elbows and knees, her mane and tail were both wispy and equally mangey, she was wearing a leather vest and a ragged stained dress that looked several sizes too big for her skinny frame and was holding what looked like an old lever action rifle in her skinny forehooves and had a bullet belt slung across her shoulder.

“Ya thinks day’ll fetch us some good caps?” the mare cackled to the stallion as he stumbled back to his spot across the campfire from her.

“Course, Red Eye wants every Stable Dweller he can git his hooves on,” the stallion slurred as he sat down.

As the two talked, I noticed a bright light coming from the bubbling waters, a few ponies in a rusted metal boat with a flashlight splashed through the fog to a rotten dock and was tied off as the new ponies trudged up the hill to join the two by the fire. The new ponies were just as mutated as my two captures, all had the same patched clothing and guns, they all seemed to know each other because they greeted and laughed and shared weird looking food and drink, they all had the same symbol roughly stitched into their clothes, a pair of crossed revolvers.

“Dat da new bounties, Chip?” a skinny stallion with a revolver on a rifle stock asked the stallion who had grabbed me.

“Yep,” the stallion slurred, “Gonna make some perdy caps.”

“Ah can’t wait t’ git that new dress,” an incredibly bloated mare chuckled as she swayed her bloated flanks in what she must’ve thought was a very seductive way, but it just made find her even more repulsive, “Ah’s gonna look so perdy.”

“No perdier dan yous flank, Lil’ Maybel,” an equally bloated stallion with a double barreled shotgun slurred as he slapped the bloated mare’s flank, she giggled and playfully pulled the stallion down the hill away from the campfire, soon there were loud moans and grunts coming from the direction they left.

I grimaced and looked around the clearing so I wouldn’t have to focus on my digusting captures. The clearing was on a small hill surrounded by the same trees I’d been seeing since I’d entered the swamp, I had no idea where I was, but I could hear the calls of animals off in the distance. As I looked around, I noticed that I wasn’t the only captive, there was a small pony a few feet away with her back to me and was probably sleeping.

“Hey,” I whispered to her, she didn’t move or she was ignoring the world, “Psst, hey.”

The filly still didn’t move, I shifted my body around and managed to scoot a foot or so closer without my captures noticing, “Psst, hey, miss.”

The filly’s ears perked up slightly and she shifted her head to look at me, it was then that I noticed a few things about her…

One, she had very startling eyes, like a kaleidoscope of colors shifting around with the firelight. Two, her muzzle was duct taped shut, so she couldn’t speak. Three, she was a Unicorn...but her mane, tail and coat were all a dull off white with dull gray vertical stripes…

She was a Zebra...Unicorn...thing.

Before my mind could think of a more tactful question such as, _“Are you ok?”_ or _“Who are these mutants?”_ My mouth instead chose the least tactful, “What the hell are you?”

The filly must’ve been expecting the question because she went back to ignoring me.

“We’s should getta move on,” a stallion slurred as he stood up and lurched over to the filly, he started to grab at her in very inappropriate ways.

“The fucks the matter with you!” I shouted, abruptly getting the attention of the group, straining against the duct tape holding me, “Get the fuck off of her!”

The stallion glanced over at me like I was insane, “What?” he slurred as he continued to grope the filly, “It’s just a Zigga.”

The group cackled madly, “Perdy Eyes likes Zigga flank.”

I couldn’t believe my ears, was the world so damned broken that this was seen as normal?

No, I had to stop this somehow. I levitated a large rock from down the hill by the water.

“Get the fucking hell away from her!” I shouted as I telekinetically slammed the rock into the stallion’s shocked face, in the silence of the campsite the rock made a very loud wet cracking sound and the stallion crumpled back into the muddy grass twitching.

“Yous gonna pay for dat!” a mare shouted as she stood up brandishing her rifle with a swaying aim but before she could shoot me, her thin neck exploded and painted some of her fellows in a shower of bone and blood as her headless corpse crumpled over the log she was sitting on moments before.

There was a moment of silence before the camp went up in hellfire.

“Ziggas!” the stallion holding a double barreled shotgun shouted before a string of silent explosions riddled his chest and he fell back into the campfire, spraying up a plume of smoke, sparks and burning wood into the air. The camp went up in a frenzied cacophony of gunshots as the mutant ponies got up with their weapons and tried to fight off the unseen attackers, a skinny stallion’s legs were blown out from underneath him and a last bullet struck his head killing him, a pair of mutants’ chests exploded causing them to topple over each other. When the smoke cleared, there was only one mutant stallion left shakely holding the revolver rifle, he grabbed the filly roughly by the scruff of her neck and held her in front of him as a shield.

“Let her go!” I shouted at the mutant but he paid me no attention.

“Ya Ziggas want her back?!” the stallion shouted past the grip in his mouth into the darkness as he groped the filly, “then come git her!”

The side of his head exploded and his body crumpled back releasing the filly from his grasp, she sat down on the ground and simply sat there for a while. My hearing slowly returned to me as the campsite settled down again, I also noticed that the crotch of my Stable suit was soaked, in what...well I’ll let you use your imagination.

“Hey,” I asked the filly, “Can you help me?”

The filly ignored me.

I looked around for something to cut the duct tape with when a series of shimmering lights caught my eye and four Zebras wearing weird plastic cloaks over sets of black barding appeared from thin air around the campsite and one appeared behind the filly, he was holding a weird looking rifle at his side and had a long curved knife out.

“Get the fuck away from her!” I shouted at the cloaked Zebra as he cut the duct tape away from the filly’s ankles, wrists and muzzle, he sheathed his knife under his cloak and hugged the filly tightly.

“I’m sorry, Prysm,” the Zebra whispered to the filly in an almost loving way.

“It’s not your fault, Umeme,” the filly whispered back before she glanced over at me. She let go of the Zebra and trotted over to me, her horn glowing with a kaleidoscope of colors just like her eyes.

“Hush now, quiet now,” the filly sang quietly, “It’s time to lay your sleepy head.”

My body suddenly felt very heavy as my sight was filled with color, I struggled to stay awake, but it was a lost battle and I passed out.

“Hush now, quiet now,” the filly sang gently as my consciousness faded, “It’s time to go to bed.”

**Level Up:** Horse Sense: You have experienced tense situations out in the Wasteland...at least your brains in the right place still. You gain +10% more experience points whenever experience is gained.


	4. Saluem

**Chapter Three: Saluem**

_"We all make choices..."_

Alive…

I was still alive.

Well, when I mean alive I mean that my brain felt like it had gone through a meat mincer, every muscle and bone in my body was screaming out in agony and my throat was so dry I could barely feel my tongue...but, I was somehow alive.

The first thing I noticed when I came too, aside from the pain, were very faint sounds of crowds moving around drifting in on the edge of my hearing. The second thing was the smell of something sweet tickling my nostrils and reminding me of the apple pie from the Cafeteria. The third thing was the warm blanket I was laying under, it felt a little rough against my coat, but it still felt nice to my tired body.

I opened my eyes and was greeted to a rifle’s muzzle pointed at my head, looking past the muzzle I saw a Zebra stallion holding the rifle in his hooves in a defensive stance. His silver eyes glared bitterly down at me, I looked back down at the muzzle again, I didn’t recognize its design but I guessed it was probably 5.56mm.

“Can I help you?” I hoarsely asked.

The Zebra didn’t say anything, but he did straighten his aim at me, did he not understand Equestrian?

I started to sit up in the bedroll but the Zebra jabbed the muzzle of his rifle into my ribs.

“Aw! The fuck!” I shouted bitterly, rubbing my sore ribs, “What’s your problem?”

The Zebra grinned slightly.

“That’s quite enough, Tahka,” a stern feminine voice filled the room.

I looked around and saw a Zebra mare standing in the doorway of the hut, she stepped up to the Zebra with the rifle and whacked the back of his head, “Get out of my home.”

“But, Saluem,” the Zebra with the rifle started as he was shoved toward the door flap, “Umeme told me to keep an eye on the Stable Dweller.”

“OUT!” the Zebra mare sternly said as she closed the door flap on the Zebra, “If my nephew wants to see my patients then he can come down here himself.”

She turned back to me and offered a slight smile, “I must apologize for Tahka’s behaviour.”

“Uh…” I said as I looked over the Zebra mare.

“You can call me, Saluem,” the Zebra cheerfully said as she extended a forehoof to me, “what’s your name?”

“Slug… Iron Slug,” I stammered slightly, why was I getting nervous?

“Iron Slug…” Saluem murmured as she dug through an old saddlebag with a pink butterfly over a candy red double cross and pulled out a compact metal cylinder, a thermos, and passed it to me, “Not the weirdest name I’ve heard.”

I opened the thermos’ lid and cautiously sniffed the contents, it smelled sweet.

“Healing potion,” Saluem explained as she riffled through a small storage chest in the corner of the hut, “Home brewed, Celya put in some honey from a hive beast we caught earlier.”

I sipped at the potion and my throat instantly felt better as the warm liquid spread through my aching body filling me with energy, I continued drinking as I watched the Zebra mare pick up a mortar and pestle and started working on some strange herbs and turning them into a viscous lime green paste.

Despite probably being older than me, she looked very lovely, her striped mane was brushed down over the left side of her face and the black stripes in it and her tail were very clear. She wore an old looking black coat with the same butterfly and cross over a bright red shirt that just barely reached the spiraling sun cutie mark on her plump flanks, or were they glyphs? A couple of pendants made from bottle glass tied to braided string necklaces were around her neck, one small gold ring in both of her earlobes and a carved wooden bangle rested on her front left forehoof.

She pulled off her coat and draped it over the chest and sat down beside me, she gently pulled the blanket off of me and that’s when I noticed that I was naked. I quickly covered myself earning a soft chuckle from the Zebra mare.

“Goodness,” she chuckled past her forehoof, “It’s good to see somepony so old can still be embarrassed about their body.”

“I’m not embarrassed,” I squeaked out blushing profusely and keeping my crotch covered, “Where’s my suit? And my saddlebag and pistol?”

“Safe,” Saluem calmly reassured me as she placed the viscous paste aside, “You had quite a day yesterday, you were shot… twice, suffered a minor concussion and Arhem’s still patching up your suit.”

I cocked an eyebrow, “I don’t remember...being shot.”

Saluem brought over a small mirror and passed it to me, I looked at my reflection and saw the bandages wrapped over tightly around my chest and the small bandage over my forehead with my horn poking out.

“Sometimes the brain doesn’t react to being shot if you’re in danger,” Saluem explained as she readied the new bandages with the viscous paste, “In any case, one of the bullets grazed you and the second was easy enough to remove, they didn’t hit anything vital and the healing bandages are working well, of course your PipBuck made it easier for me.”

We sat in silence as she carefully unwrapped the bandages on me and I saw that they had dried blood stains on the inside, she placed them in a small plastic bag and dabbed a damp washcloth against the wounds and wrapped fresh bandages over them.

“You need at least another couple of days to rest,” Saluem said as she stood and grabbed the small bag, “Don’t worry, you’re safer with us than you would be out in the Hayseed Swamp alone.”

“Hayseed Swamp?” I asked checking my shoulder, “Is that this place’s name?”

“Don’t worry,” Saluem gently whispered to me, “We’ll explain everything when you’re ready, Iron Slug.”

Zebras.

Equestria’s enemies. They slaughtered us by the millions and burned our homeland with poisonous balefire radiation. Back in Stable Fifty-Two they were solely portrayed as the demonic, soulless and villainous antithesis of all ponykind. I’d never really paid it much attention, it was just pre war propaganda after all.

Was it fair to paint Saluem by the sins of her ancestors over two hundred years ago?

I didn’t have an answer as I leaned back in the bedroll and closed my eyes.

At least they’d let me stay for now.

When I opened my eyes again, I was greeted to the dull lime green light of probably midday, Saluem wasn’t in her hut, but there was the same Unicorn Zebra filly from the campsite was sitting beside my bedroll. She looked much better compared to the last time I’d seen her, her coat mane and tail were clean and she had bandages wrapped around her flank and her forehead. She ignored me as she continued to fiddle with my PipBuck flicking through the radio.

“What’re you doing?” I asked the filly pulling my foreleg back.

“Auntie Saluem asked me to watch you while she went out for food,” the filly calmly muttered, “I thought that your gadget had some music to listen too.”

I looked down at my PipBuck’s radio, I noticed that there were a few more signals than there had been when I was last awake. I selected a random channel and as my radio sparked to life, a stallion’s voice came into focus.

_“Friends, ponies, rejoice! Although the world about you is bleak, scarred and poisoned by the war of honorless, thoughtless, inferior ponies of the past, we do not have to live in the shadow of their greed and wickedness. Together, we can raise Equestria back to its former beauty! Together, we can build a new kingdom where all live together in perfect unity! It’s already happening, my good ponies. Already, the foundation for a new and wonderful age is being built. Yes, it’s hard work, but don’t we owe it to ourselves and to the future generations of ponies, to be better? No, to be the best we can possibly be? I’m telling you now, as your friend, as your leader, that we can. We must. And we will!”_

“What in Celestia’s name was that about?” I asked myself staring down at my PipBuck.

The stallion’s voice oozed with the greasy charisma of a cult leader, he reminded me of Overseer Nail. So there was a leader out here, that was serious news to me seeing as how there didn’t even seem to be much of a country left to rule.

“You don’t know about Red Eye?” Prysm asked slightly startled, “Uncle says he’s just some prancing colt fucker.”

“Do your parents let you speak like that?” I crossly asked as I checked my PipBuck.

“Mom’s gone,” The filly muttered looking away, “I don’t know where Dad is.”

“Sorry,” I looked at the filly and felt a little embarrassed, “I don’t know my dad either.”

“Didn’t care about you, huh?”

“No, Mom just never told me.”

We sat in a long silence before I pointed at my PipBuck.

“Is he your leader?” I asked.

The filly stared up at me before rolling over and laughing.

“No, the Caesar watches over us and he’ll guide us back to-”

“Prysm,” Saluem interrupted as she entered the hut holding a bowl of something in her teeth, “I told you to just watch my patient and leave him to his rest.”

“But Auntie,” Prysm protested but Saluem ushered her out.

“I’m sorry about her,” she apologized.

“It’s ok,” I reassured the mare, “Honestly, it’s nice to see that she’s fine after what happened with those mutants.”

“Swampfolk,” Saluem corrected as she pulled off her coat, “The Foalbanks, specifically.”

“Ok, so not mutants then?”

“No, they are mutated.”

“How many are there?” I asked as Saluem sat down beside me passing the weird looking soup.

I gave the soup an experimental lick, it tasted like carrots, potatoes and hay chips.

“There are families scattered all across the Hayseed Swamp and most of them are very hostile to outsiders and even to other families. In this area there’s the Foalbanks, they have the town of Dela Crow, a day southwest of here. The McZaffords claim the Port Eads Whiskey Brewery by Eads Bay a couple of days northeast just outside of Baltimare. The Black Apples live in a plantation in the city of Black Isle a couple of days east. And the Knoxx are in the old detention center far to the south a week’s journey from here.”

“Why’re they so mutated?”

Saluem grimaced glancing away for a second before she returned my gaze, “I think they were molded by the radiation that slowly seeped in from the Heartlands and adapted to the horrors of this dead world.”

“Radiation did that?” I asked in horror.

“Well, radiation and inbreeding,” Saluem admitted softly.

“Celestia’s mercy,” I muttered as chills ran down my spine.

“Celestia has nothing to do with them,” Saluem muttered sternly as she stood, “But perhaps Nightmare Moon had a hoof in it.”

I looked up at her as she stood, taken aback slightly by her blasphemy, but I suppose it made sense that a Zebra didn’t believe in the Goddesses, did she believe in the Caesar figure like Prysm did?

“Hey, Saluem, do you believe in anything?”

The Zebra looked back at me slightly puzzled.

“Well, Prysm mentioned some figure called the Caesar, is he your god?”

Saluem took a very long moment before she started snickering and laughed for a while before she spoke, “I am sorry, it is just that I did not expect you to ask about something so childish.”

I stared at her very puzzled.

“The Caesar is little more than a story that mothers tell children so they behave,” the Zebra mare chuckled past her forehoof, “You know, eat all your vegetables or the Caesar will forbid you from Elysium.”

“What’s Elysium, is it your heaven?”

“No, well kind of,” when Saluem had calmed down she straightened herself before continuing, “Elysium is or was our first homeland, hundreds if not a thousand of years ago when the earth was young and your Goddesses were but mortals. We had to leave because the earth became hungry and the water refused to flow, the thirteen tribes were banded together by the First Caesar, history has forgotten his name or perhaps there were many Caesars over many lifetimes, but he led us north to the grasslands south of Equestria, our adoptive homeland. But then the Discord happened and the First Caesar died or he returned to Elysium, pure hogwash.”

“Ok,” I muttered slightly embarrassed, “If you don’t believe in the Goddesses and you think the Caesar is just a story, then what do you believe in?”

Saluem sat back down beside me, “We Zebra believe that all in the stars desire the destruction and enslavement of all of the earth. We believe that when your Princess Luna was banished to the moon, she was corrupted by the stars and when she was allowed back, she sought to fulfill the desires of her masters.”

“But, the Goddesses watch over Equestria, they want to help.”

“Travel this dead world then come back to me and tell me that your Goddesses truly want what is best for your people.”

I was about to argue with her some more but the door flap was pulled aside and a couple of Zebra stallions entered.

The bigger Zebra by the door flap was wearing a long sleeve shirt made from purple fabric, he also had massive burns over the right side of his face that exposed his teeth through his cheek.

The younger Zebra was dressed in a similar dark shirt though his was short sleeved and he had far less visible scars.

“Aunt Saluem, did Prysm come in here?” he asked Saluem.

“Yes, Umeme,” Saluem responded, “she was bothering my patient so I told her to leave.”

Umeme looked me over for a moment, “You tried to save my little cousin, thank you.”

“Uh, you’re welcome,” I stammered, “It’s nothing really.”

“No, truly, you killed Bitterchip Foalbanks, the Foal Fucker of Dela Crow,” Umeme continued as he came closer kneeling to my height, “So tell me, Stable Dweller, why did you try to save Prysm?”

I glanced at Saluem for support, but she only offered a shy smile.

“Honestly… how could I let that fat fuck do… well that to anypony?” I asked the Zebra, “What kind of world would allow that?”

Umeme looked down at me for a long time before he spoke again, “How able are you with a gun?”

“Umeme, no!” Saluem sternly raised her voice against her nephew as she jumped up, “You’re not dragging my patient into your little crusade.”

“Aunt Saluem, he seems to have his head in the right,” Umeme replied calmly, “Perhaps he can be of use to us-”

“No!” Saluem shouted as she shoved Umeme and his friend out the door.

“Alright, Aunt Saluem,” Umeme turned to his friend, “Let’s go, Q’osk.”

“Hi,” I looked up from the science book I was reading, an all black Pegasus filly with beautiful pink eyes was standing before me, “My name’s Arty, what’s yours?”

“Orion,” I answered flatly returning to my book.

“Whatcha reading?” the filly asked me as she sat down beside me.

“The Studies of Dragon Evolution,” I muttered scooting to the side away from my bothersome distraction.

“Oh ok,” the filly looked around my reading area, “Why aren’t you playing with everypony else?” 

I looked up at our classmates playing soccer annoyed, “Maybe I’m better off without anypony, did you think of that?”

The filly glanced down at me, “C’mon, everypony needs somepony.”

“I don’t,” I muttered turning back to my book pile, “I have my books to read.”

“Seems boring,” the filly muttered as she finally stood, “Well, if you need somepony to talk with, I’m here.”

She started down the hill to join the other children, but she turned back to me, “I’m glad to meet you again, Orion.”

I watched Arty as she joined the other children, “Me too.”

It was probably nighttime when I opened my eyes for a third time, looking around I noticed that there were two shadows by the door flap. Looking at my PipBuck, I saw that it was in the evening. I looked down at myself, the bandages were gone and there were two faint pink spots on my shoulder, probably the bullet wounds.

“How much longer will he have to be here, Saluem?” a very rough voice rumbled in from outside, “Two days is long enough.”

“He’s wounds are healed now, but he still needs a little more rest, Lucius,” Saluem’s gentler voice drifted in, “Besides, what would Doctor Rose say if she found out that you turned away her son, after she helped you?”

‘Okay, what?’, I thought as I sat up in my bedroll, the blanket fell to my waist, ‘How did they know Mom? Did she come through here weeks ago?’

“I will never understand your and Kaldi’s _sickening fetish_ , after what _they_ did to us,” the rough voice growled as he slowly plotted away, “Fine, you can keep your little _pet_ … for now.”

I looked up at the door flap as Saluem trotted back in and noticed that I was awake.

“Um, how much of that did you hear?” she asked slightly blushing.

“Enough,” I muttered, “Did my mom come through here?”

Saluem refused to meet my eyes, she acted like she was focusing on other matters.

“Saluem, I understand that you’re doing your job as a healer,” I started, trying to keep my voice as steady as possible, “But, I’m fine now and I need to find my mom, she’s why I left my stable in the first place.”

Saluem still didn’t look up at me but she did try to say something multiple times but she didn’t seem able to. After what might’ve been a few minutes or maybe an hour, she finally met my eyes and there was pain in them, something deep rooted in her past made her loathe violence. Maybe.

“Saluem,” I gently said taking her hooves in mine, “I need to find my mom, if you know where she might’ve gone, please I’ll do anything. Just tell me.”

Saluem glanced warily at the door flap before she stood and stepped outside, I heard her speaking with somepony in hushed tones and she returned with another Zebra wearing black barding over a red patched shirt.

“The General wishes for your presence, Stable Dweller.”

I looked at Saluem and she nodded, “Alright.”

The Zebra passed me a dull red shirt, I pulled it on and he escorted me out of the hut and through the Zebra town.

The Zebra town was set up in a square with large trees piled up to form makeshift walls, there were a few rows of mud huts like Saluem’s with four muddy streets separating the four quadrants. At the center of the town was the only true building, a two story blue farmhouse with a few Zebras in matching black coats and rifles. There were a few rotting decapitated pony heads mounted on spears leading up to the farmhouse. Each head was mutated and were clearly Swampfolk, but I still felt a stab in my guts, what’s gonna happen to me?

Despite being late in the evening there were a large number of Zebras, perhaps a thousand or so, and even a few ponies lining the streets watching me nervously. Most would turn away when I glanced at them, maybe they hadn’t seen a friendly pony before?

“Is that the pony, Mom?” a little colt asked an older mare who must’ve been his mom.

“Don’t point, Carino.”

“Wait here, Stable Dweller,” the Zebra escorting me ordered, “The General is…”

“Touchy,” Saluem interrupted, “My brother is not at his best right now and gets… touchy.”

We entered the farmhouse and the Zebra pointed a forehoof at a chair and he entered a side room. I sat down in the chair and waited for a long while, the other guards watched me with smoldering suspension.

“Bring him in,” a rough voice called out from the room.

The Zebra came out and roughly grabbed my foreleg and almost dragged me into the room with Saluem following close behind.

The room was dark with dozens of mutated animal heads mounted on the walls, a wolf with crooked teeth, a lion with black silky fur, a large dog that had weird looking electronics on it.

A red throw rug on the floor lead to a large throne like chair in the center of the room, the throne had a dozen spears behind it with small red flags on each. There was a colorful animal’s pelt draped over the seat. Ten Zebra guards wearing sets of black segmented metal armor over purple shirts and with red shawls around their shoulders each one was holding a rifle, five flanked either side of the throw rug.

And sitting on the throne was possibly the freakiest but also most regal looking being I’ve ever seen in my life. The General was fully encased in a set of heavy armor that matched his guards but it was made of some kind of foggy glass like material with an overcoat made from brown leather. A gasmask of some kind was pulled over his muzzle and connected by hoses and tubes to a large black leathery bag on his back that expanded and contracted with his breathing like a large lung. He had a long spear like weapon with electronic parts connected to both spearheads, it looked like a mass produced design, but I couldn’t place where it might’ve come from. The General glared down at me with a pair of bloody scarlet eyes so different from Saluem’s pretty blue ones.

“General, this is the Stable Dweller, Iron Slug, Umeme caught at the Foalbanks campsite,” my escort bowed to the General, Saluem trotted up to the armored giant’s side with Umeme who was holding a very sleepy Prysm.

“I am Amandla Lucius Artor Septumas, General of the Legion of Outcasts,” a very deep voice rumbled out from the mask, “you tried to save my niece.”

I tentatively nodded.

“You have my thanks, Iron Slug, as payment you may have a weapon of your choice from my personal armory.”

“T-thank you, Sir.” This wasn’t quite what I was expecting.

“Now,” the General continued, “My son has informed me of your reasoning for saving Prysm, but perhaps you could reiterate it for all of my guard to hear.”

It wasn’t a question, this was a demand. I swallowed hard and repeated what I’d told Umeme.

“Honestly… Sir,” I chose my words carefully, “What kind of world would allow that to happen to anypony, especially a filly?”

The guards around me murmured to themselves for a while and they seemed to agree.

“Perhaps we can come to an agreement after all, Stable Dweller.”

“What’d you have in mind, Sir?”

The General leaned forward and slowly stood from his throne, all of the guards looked ready to catch their leader though he seemed fine. Enough.

“You desire your mother’s whereabouts, no?” the General pointed a forehoof at me, “Help me and I will help you.”

I glanced at Saluem, who nodded after a moment’s hesitation. I looked back up at the General, “Alright, Sir.”

“Alright then,” the General muttered as he slowly slumped back down on his throne and clopped his hooves, “Umeme.”

“Three days ago we were attacked by the Foalbanks, nopony was severely injured, but my Aunt Kaldi, Prysm’s mother, was foal-napped in the confusion,” Umeme explained as he stepped up and passed me a photo of three Zebras and one Unicorn, two colts and two fillies, I assumed the Zebras were Saluem, the General and I guessed Kaldi when they were younger, “We believe that Aunt Kaldi was taken to Dela Crow as retribution for past raids.”

Umeme took the photo from me, “My group is going to infiltrate the town, find Aunt Kaldi and bring her back.”

“You will accompany Umeme and support him any way you can,” the General rumbled sitting up, “Do this, and I will tell you where your mother has gone.”

I thought over the proposition for what felt like a long time, I did tell Saluem that I was willing to do anything to find Mom, but at the same time I didn’t really have much combat experience, aside from those bloated bats and that Swampfolk with the rock. I wasn’t quite sure how useful I’d be in a firefight.

But I needed to find Mom and this Zebra knew where she might’ve gone.

I looked up at the General and stuck out my forehoof, “Anything to find my Mom.”

The General’s eyes visibly lit up behind his mask and took my hoof in his before he grabbed his spear. He dragged me outside and we stood on the porch in front of the many Zebras of the town.

Holding the spear above his head, he shouted, “The Foalbanks will suffer for their final insult!”

The crowd loudly erupted into applause and Saluem came up behind me, “I hope you know what you are doing.”

“Yeah,” I muttered to the Zebra, “Me too.”

**Level Up:** Hardened: You take 5% less damage from all physical attacks, but all healing items are 5% less effective over time.


	5. A Question of Morality

**Chapter Four: A Question of Morality**

_“Yellow, be mellow. Red, ya dead.”_

The General wordlessly handed his spear to one of his guards and lead Umeme and me away from the cheering crowd back into the farmhouse. I saw a few ancient pictures framed on the walls, one of them showed a young mare with a wide brimmed hat and a middle aged stallion sitting on a dock with fishing poles in their hooves with a large farm behind them. A second photo showed the same mare but older holding a revolver in her mouth standing with the now elderly stallion holding a lever action rifle in his hooves. They stood beside a weird looking chicken with a scaly body that was hung up on a post. A third photo had the stallion when he was young, he was dressed in a sharp uniform with a plaid scarf thrown over his shoulder. He stood with a young mare wearing a dress and a jacket with a foal wrapped to her chest, a happy family.

“Uh, is there anything I should know about the Foalbanks, Sir?” I asked, following after the pair.

“Well, they’re very old as far as the Swampfolk go,” Umeme explained, the General nodding to the occasional guard, “claiming to have been here in the Swamps since Baltimare was founded, but I believe that’s hog shit.”

“Ok,” we came up to a pair of double doors with a few locks, “why?”

The older fighter turned to me, “Well, Baltimare is said to be one of Equestria’s first true cities, nearly twelve hundred years old.”

We turned down another corridor and down a set of repaired stairs into a cinder block basement. There was a large door in the wall with a guard standing beside it with a hoof made hunting rifle at the ready.

“Though they number in the upper hundreds, they’ve historically been incredibly disorganized, split up into different bands based in different locations, like the raider gangs in the Heartlands, but for a few decades now they’ve been held together by a stallion called Jackchip,” Umeme continued, “You killed one of his grandsons so he’ll no doubt desire your head.”

The General nodded to the guard and reached into his overcoat. I noticed a soft pink glow as he fished out a key and the guard unlocked the door for him.

I looked around at the armory mouth agape, there must’ve been at least a few dozen weapons of all kinds lining the walls on racks and shelves and hundreds of drab metal boxes of ammunition and weapon parts. I took a tentative step into the room and looked back at the General.

“Any weapon I want?”

“Just one,” the General replied.

I perused the gun shelves and racks and I recognized nearly every gun. Pistols, revolvers, submachine guns, rifles, machine guns, shotguns, magical energy weapons and even what looked like a Howitzer leaning in a corner. I didn’t know what weapon to pick.

Ignoring the magical energy weapons, even if I understood how they worked in concept I didn’t have the brains to deal with maintaining them, so I looked over the guns starting with the assault rifles, but I didn’t feel very confident in being able to use them even if I knew how to take them apart. Continuing on, I came to the shotguns, double barreled, lever action, pump action and semi automatic, but I shook my head, if I couldn’t handle rifles how could I expect to handle a shotgun? I finally came across the pistols and revolvers, these I felt confident in. I skimmed over the selection, 22LR, 10mm and 357 Magnum were out because 22LR was an anemic cartridge and I already had a 10mm and 357 Magnum, the 44 Magnum looked tempting but I thought about the logistics of finding a ready supply of bullets for it, I continued on.

Then one pistol caught my eye.

The 45 auto pistol was smaller than my 10mm and revolver, its grip was patterned to look like white snakeskin, the hammer and the trigger were both skeletonized for weight reduction, the barrel and slide were shortened by a half inch or so and there was a groove in the nickel polished slide instead of ironsights. I picked it up with my magic and looked it over, both sides of the slide had strange letters engraved into it, on the right side was _Kaì tò phõs én te skotía phaínei_ and on the left side was _Kaì é skotía aútò oú katélaben_.

“And the Light shines in the Darkness and the Darkness has not overcome it,” I whispered to myself, wait how did I know that? It clearly wasn’t in Equestrian.

I took out the magazine, I guessed by the witness holes it offered six or seven shots. My 10mm offered twelve shots but it was much heavier. My PipBuck pinged and I looked down at it, my Inventory sorting spell had labeled it as _A Light Shining in Darkness_ , how the hell my little piece of Stable-Tec technology knew stuff like that was starting to get on my nerves.

“Beautiful, no?” Umeme asked, “One of my ancestors looted that little gem during a raid on a long dead Swampfolk family down south, but it doesn’t work.”

“A broken firing pin?” I asked, pulling the slide back to check, no, the firing pin seemed to be alright.

“No idea,” the stallion shrugged, “It didn’t fire when I tried, you’re better off picking a functional weapon.”

I looked down at the pistol, I don’t really know why but something deep in my gut was telling me to take it, “May I try it out first, Sir?”

The General pointed a hoof to a side door, “Of course, use my range.”

I picked up a couple boxes of 45 auto, loaded a couple of bullets into one of the ten magazines and chambered a round. I entered the room, there was a table just inside to the left with a dented sheet of metal hanging from the ceiling a foot or so from a wall of sandbags opposite the door. I set the ammo box on the table and took aim at the sheet metal. The groove sight was a little odd at first but I quickly got the hang of it, I flipped the safety to fire and pulled the trigger.

The bullet tore a large hole through the sheet metal with a thunderous boom and hit the sandbags behind it. Given just how dented the sheet metal was that didn’t surprise me. I pulled the trigger again and another thunderous bullet tore another larger hole in the target. Ok, so the bullets are pretty powerful, that could prove useful. I loaded the spare magazines in the snakeskin holster belt and flipped on the safety.

“I’ll take it, the bullets and a replacement hammer spring for my revolver,” I told the General.

Umeme introduced me to his group of fighters the following morning, Mashhad, Tahka, Q’osk and Ophia.

Jorqar Mashhad was probably the oldest stallion, if not the oldest Zebra in the Outcasts. He was probably close to eighty, his few remaining teeth had been sharpened into points as some kind of adulthood ritual for his tribe. He was dressed in light barding over a muted blue trench coat and a wide brimmed hat and used a hoof made magical energy weapon that had a small crank on the side of the energy capacitor and a wooden board stock, the sniper explained that he used his magical energy musket, as he called it, because his forehooves had been burned as a punishment many years ago.

_Tahka_ Tahkamata was the youngest in the group, just a year older than me, from a town in the Manehattan Ruins called Friendship City. His barding was reinforced with metal plates and he was handy with his rifle and better with explosives but he seemed rather impulsive.

Q’osk was the massive stallion from the other day and was from a frigid mountainous area in the northern Zebra homeland that he called Ma’Wenzi. He wore a full suit of heavy metal armor and a weird looking helmet that he’d stained a dull matte black over his purple shirt that he called Lorica Segmentata, or something like that, and he wielded a pair of belt fed machine guns on an oversized battle saddle. He hadn’t been with the group when they saved Prysm and me because he was recovering from a crawdad bite on his haunch and still wore a brace on his knee at Saluem’s insistence.

Ophia was the only mare in the group. Her eyes, sweeping wavy stripes and glyph were all bright strawberry red instead of black or gray like every other Zebra in the Castle. She had an old long jagged scar line that started at her upper lip and ran up beside her nose to the corner of her right eye to her brow. Her old canvas coveralls were a dark drab green with four breast pockets, a thick shoulder belt made of black leather that carried a compact machine pistol that used 32 caliber ammunition and her forelegs below her elbows and knees were bound by gaiters made of thick black leather with a combat knife sheathed in one of them. She was very skilled with her rifle and a pair of nawrly looking spiked ponyshoes. Apparently she had to defeat Umeme in a wrestling match to prove her worth to the General and even then it took the General’s late wife to convince him to allow Ophia to fight. I also noticed that nearly all of the other Zebra in the Castle seemed to avoid her for some reason.

We stood in line with hundreds of Zebras at the Castle’s cafeteria, the head chef Ceyla, an older Earth pony mare with a cleft lip, was handing out bowls of crawdad and potato soup with small rolls of bread. Crawdads were the mutated descendants of freshwater crustaceans native to the Swamps with the young ones being about one to two feet long but the older ones could be six to nine feet long. They had multiple legs, big front pincer claws, worm sucker or alligator mouths, a few black beady eyes and were covered in a greenish black exoskeleton which offered an amount of protection from damage. According to Ceyla, they made great eating and required very little care to harvest.

“What model of rifle is that?” I asked Umeme as we sat down at a table to eat, “I’ve seen the schematics of nearly every gun Ironshod made, but I don’t recognize any of yours.”

“Good,” Umeme muttered as he unholstered his rifle and showed me.

“Maybe that is not such a good idea, sir,” Ophia interrupted glaring daggers of suspicion at me.

“Ophia, our ancestors’ designs are far from secret,” Umeme replied sternly, “This is a Type 33 Carbine, it’s older and wasn’t used as heavily in the war like the Type 41s were, but it’s much more durable and reliable, especially here.”

The carbine was a few inches shorter than an assault rifle, the short ribbed magazine was curved and set behind the trigger meaning it was a bullpup design, the gas system was built above the barrel and a small bulbous device was screwed on to the muzzle.

“Ok, is it a closed bolt?” I asked, IF-64 assault rifles were roller-delayed, gas blowback.

“Yes and it’s only semi automatic.”

“Ok, how do the bullets explode? Do you use specialty ammo?”

“Most Zebra weapons were enchanted with environmental effects,” Mashhad explained, “We don’t have magic like you do or the power armor that you developed, so we got creative.”

“Ok, so where do you get the bullets?” I asked past a mouth full of soupy bread, they’re pretty complex and I can’t imagine somepony making them by hoof reliably.

“Trottingham is full of factories,” Mashhad answered as Q’osk and Tahka sat down with us, “Some say almost as many as Fillydelphia and many of them are still at least somewhat functional. Hell, the suburb of Gundalk is basically one big bullet factory run by a gang called the Bullet Farmers.” 

“Bullet Farmers?” I asked incredulously, surely you can’t grow bullets like you would plants… could you?

Once we finished, I went to claim my gear from the Castle’s armorer, Arhem. The Armory was in a very large hut near the farmhouse and the inside had a few young Zebras working at old looking sewing machines powered by pedals, shelves covered in cardboard boxes were in the back. The armorer himself was a middle aged stallion with an eye made of blue glass, he also was smoking a hoof rolled cigar behind a small desk.

“You are the Unicorn who saved little Prysm?” Arhem asked as he lit his cigar with a lighter.

“Yeah,” I coughed through the pungent smoke.

“We just finished your gear, hang on.”

The armorer trotted back to a shelf and brought back a large cardboard box that he dropped on his desk.

“One Stable suit, two bullet holes, patched,” Arhem read from a sheet of paper on a clipboard as he pulled out my suit, a couple of circular patches made of black leather were hoof sewn into the shoulder and chest. I ran my forehoof over it, the work was almost invisible to my touch.

“One saddlebag, one bullet hole, patched, reinforced with heavy leather,” Arhem continued as he pulled out my saddlebag, a patch of black canvas was sewn into the flap and the sides were reinforced with a layer of leather, “Contents, one IF-21 10mm pistol, excellent condition, three magazines, one IF-38 357 Magnum police revolver, broken, fourteen loose 357 Magnum bullets, one flask, one small fixing kit and one old photograph,” the Zebra read off each item as I dug through making sure my stuff was all there.

“There is one other thing,” the Zebra trotted up to a shelf and pulled down a set of barding and brought it over, “if you are going to Dela Crow, then you will need some better protection than just a Stable suit.”

I looked over the barding worn by the guards around the Castle, it looked like it came from a combination of a sleeveless jacket and padded hoofball equipment with a bandolier offering pockets for small objects like ammo. The whole piece was made from thick black leather and seemed to offer a little more protection than just my suit alone.

“Now, this isn’t proper armor, it should protect you from scrapes, light shrapnel and some blunt impacts but not much else. Use the changing room.” Arhem pointed a forehoof at a side door.

Stepping inside and pulling the door closed, I was in a small room with a stool, I pulled off my red shirt and pulled on my suit, the barding and my saddlebag.

“Feels good,” I told Arhem, tugging on the barding, “What do I owe you?”

“I’ll tell you what Kid,” the old Zebra said, blowing out a smoke ring, “Keep your caps, just get Kaldi back here and I’ll give you some real proper armor.”

“Caps?” I asked, “Not bits?”

The armorer glanced at me puzzled for a second before it dawned on him, “Oh, you do not know about caps.”

Bottle caps.

That was the most widely used currency out here.

Arhem spent a good half hour explaining currency up here, apparently, merchants from the Heartlands had once used a measure of clean water to barter for goods and eventually they started using the bottle caps instead to represent the water. He explained that my 10mm pistol in its impossibly good condition was worth nearly eight hundred caps if I found a fair merchant in an area where 10mm bullets were commonplace, but my revolver was just barely a dozen in its current state even if 357 Magnum was plentiful here.

As ridiculous as it first seemed to me and it was very ridiculous, it also made some weird kind of sense. In the Old World, bits had been backed by gold and gems so in this new one why not clean water?

Just one more thing I had to get used to out here.

“Are you certain you want to do this?” Saluem asked, wrapping a healing bandage around a cleaned scrape on a colt’s foreleg.

We were back in her hut waiting for Umeme’s group to armor themselves so we could go out and deal with the Foalbanks. The Healer hadn’t said anything to me all morning so this conversation was a little unexpected.

“I said I’d do anything,” I answered as I checked over my new pistol and locked it in its snakeskin holster with the spare magazines.

I contemplated taking my saddlebag with me, reasoning that I could use the extra carrying capacity, but I also didn’t want it to get needlessly damaged again. I decided to risk it and bring it with me. I dug out my revolver and my cleaning kit and unwrapped both. I activated my PipBuck’s Repair Assist, a function that I rarely had to use back in Stable Fifty-Two, I looked over the old firearm as the spell took a couple of seconds to warm up. The Repair Assist would tell me the overall condition of an object and what parts needed the most attention. As I had thought it was mainly just the hammer spring, I telekinetically disassembled it part by part before buffing off the rust starting with the frame.

After a good few minutes for solid elbow grease I started to uncover the craftsmanship underneath, the steel had remainments of bluing and I could just barely make out some words that were crudely scratched behind the cylinder, _Forgive me, for I have availed nothing…_ Ok, what did that mean?

Were those some of the last words of Pumpkin Cake?

I pushed the scratching from my mind and focused on cleaning and fixing the hammer. I took out the old spring and put in the replacement and reassembled the gun.

“Have you ever intentionally killed somepony?”

“I-no,” I admitted, Bitterchip didn’t really count to me, I wasn’t trying to kill him, just trying to stop him.

“The Foalbanks are raised on killing, when they gain their cutie mark they’re given a knife and they go out to kill a Drylander,” Saluem knelt down by my side, placing her forehoof on mine, “Can you kill a child?”

I lowered my revolver and thought about her words, I didn’t really like being around kids much, well besides maybe Scotch, but could I really kill one? Was she really asking me that?

“Can you?”

“I have,” the mare quietly admitted after a pregnant pause.

I swung around to look at her, “Really?”

Saluem turned away and didn’t return my gaze as she spoke up, “I wasn’t much older than Prysm and Lucius was not yet the General. I was out with Kaldi and Ceyla fishing for baby crawdads and catfish when we came across him.”

She took a moment before she continued, “He was a scrawny Earth pony with a rotting corn cob cutie mark, he was so terrified of me the knife in his mouth wouldn’t stop trembling and tears flooded his eyes.”

Her voice broke and she almost sobbed before she spoke again, “I… I remember lifting my spear in my mouth and charging at him, he stumbled back frightened and fell into some muddy water and… I… I thrusted the spearhead deep into his throat before he could scream out. I still… see the gurgling blood mixing with the water when I close my eyes.”

I stared at her in disbelief, tears filled her eyes and dripped down her cheeks. If she really killed somepony and was still haunted by it, well no wonder she detested violence.

“I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-” I struggled, “I just-”

Saluem wordlessly got up and stepped over to the door flap, “Pray that you have the strength to make the right choice.”

The Castle was laid out into four parts, the Core, the Inner Rim, the Mid Rim and the Outer Rim. The Core housed the Outcasts with the farmhouse in the center. The Inner Rim was farmland, small gardens of corn, wheat, carrots, potatoes and other foods were grown and stored in the barn there.

The land that spread between the Castle’s Inner Rim’s square tree walls and the Mid Rim’s circular walls made from the wreckage of dozens of pre-war vehicles called buses was cleared of any foliage and leveled for the many shacks, huts and tents that had been set up into a haphazard town, according to Umeme only Outcasts and guests like me were permitted within the Inner Rim and the Core. Hundreds of Zebras and more ponies were milling about doing chores or shopping at the dozens of market stalls that lined the main ring street. A tall flagpole stood before the Inner Rim wall’s gate where an old scarlet flag with a rampant Zebra outlined by a golden sun flapped in the wind.

I saw many different looking Wastelanders, many of them were either wearing armor or traveling gear and welding pistols, submachine guns, rifles or shotguns. I spoke with a few of them and apparently some were from nearby cities like Winnieapolis and St Haul a week of walking to the northwest, Stalliongrad a couple weeks of walking across the Swamps to the southeast or Trottingham a week and a half off to the southwest just past the Applelasia Mountains. While others were from the Heartlands or even as far south as Manehattan almost a month’s journey. According to an older traveling merchant, she’d never seen living trees before coming up north.

So living trees were seen as rare down south, interesting.

There was a group of Pegasi, a mare and a stallion wearing matching sky blue and cloud gray uniforms and black flat caps with magical energy pistols in holsters perusing the technology merchants with a giant stallion encased head to hoof in glossy dark blue insectoid looking metal armor with matte sky blue highlights and a heavy assault rifle slung under his armored wings.

I overheard a little bit of their conversation as I trotted between the stalls.

“Honestly, Open,” the mare scolded her companion, “How, in the whole of Equestria, could a damn Star Battery be in a swamp of all places?”

“You never know, Golden,” her companion replied, brushing off the argument as their guard followed wordlessly behind them.

I didn’t really pay them much attention, instead I continued to peruse the stalls for a half hour or so before a voice drew my attention again.

“Excuse me, sir,” one of the Pegasi from before was staring curiously at the golden Fifty-Two on my suit’s collar, “Would you happen to be a genuine Stable Dweller?”

“Y-yes?” I muttered nervously.

“Does your PipBuck function, may I see it?”

“Knock it off, Open,” his companion interjected loudly, catching the attention of a few vendors, “No way he’s a Stable Dweller, probably stole that suit and PipBuck from one of the abandoned Stables out here.”

“Well aren’t you just a shining peach,” I muttered to the mare, turning back to the stallion, “Yes, my PipBuck works just fine.”

“May I see it’s map?” he asked again.

“Okay, how about an exchange?” I asked after a moment of consideration, “I haven’t been outside for very long, perhaps you could tell me who you’re with for a look at my PipBuck.”

The Pegasi exchanged glances before the stallion nodded, “Alright, I’m Open Cloud and this is my research partener, Goldenstreak, we’re researchers with the Expeditionary Corp of the Grand Pegasus Enclave.”

I shifted my gaze up to the massive armorclad stallion standing behind them, he radiated the same power as Officer Crosshairs did save for the little rabbit drawing on his chestplate, but the armored scorpion tail with the wicked several inch long blade made up for that.

“And this is Lieutenant Rayn,” Open Cloud continued waving his forehoof at the stallion, “She’s our guard for our mission.”

Ok, so the armored stallion was a mare, not a stallion.

Open Cloud looked over my PipBuck like it was some prized artifact, which I suppose it was.

“Hmm, only a few days but over half a hundred miles, impressive,” he mumbled to himself, “That’s interesting.”

“What?” I asked, pulling back my PipBuck.

“Oh nothing, just surprised it’s in such good condition… considering.”

“Considering what?”

“Oh just the Wasteland,” Open Cloud answered, brushing off the question.

“Ok, so what’s this about a Star Battery?”

“Back off, Wastelander!” Goldenstreak briskly shouted, shoving her magical energy pistol’s emitter into my muzzle, “It doesn’t concern you!”

“Excuse me,” Umeme asked, the Pegasi looked back at him and the five Outcast guards, he was wearing his plastic cloak about his shoulders over his combat barding, “Is there a problem here?”

“Nothing that concerns you, Zebra,” The mare declared, glaring daggers at the fighter.

But Umeme stared her down like a disappointed parent, “Must I really remind the illustrious Enclave of the treaty, again?”

“No, that won’t be necessary,” Lieutenant Rayn’s deep mechanized voice interrupted before her charges could say anything else, “We’ll move along, good day, Stable Dweller.”

“Fucking Enclave,” Umeme muttered harshly when they were out of earshot.

“What’s their deal?” I asked, the guards dispersed about the crowds.

“Just,” he started trying to find the words, “All of their talk of bringing civilization to the Wastes, hogshit! We’ve guarded the Long Stretch for over a hundred years, kept the trade flowing and a few months back they came flying down from their _paradise,_ claiming to be here to save us all from the hell that they fled from? Bunch of facsits the fucking lot of them!”

“Why put up with them then?”

The Zebra whipped around on me, “You saw that power armor, you see what we have at our disposal, we fight drunken hicks armed with lever guns and revolvers, most of them barely understand anything more than basic fighting tactics. The Enclave though, if even a fraction of them are that well equipped then we wouldn’t last a few hours against them, not without serious sacrifices. Come on, we should get going.”

I followed the stallion to the Castle’s main gate, twin double door gates connected by a long corridor flanked by magical energy turrets and two heavy machine guns squared up on the entrance. Tahka and Ophia were also wearing their weird plastic cloaks over their barding. The General, Saluem, Prysm and a few other Zebras stood by the main gate to see us off, Q’osk said his goodbyes to a very tall mare with matching stripes underneath her barding.

“Stay out of trouble, Pater,” the mare sternly said, hugging him, “Do not make me come after you again.”

“You need not bother yourself, Q’ale.”

Tahka was holding a young colt with Ceyla, “Be good for Nana, Tyn.”

“K, Papa,” the colt chirped, “Bring me a gift.”

“Only if you’re good.”

Ceyla, smiled and kissed Tahka’s cheek, “Be careful out there, Sweetie.”

“Hey,” Tahka replied smirking, “It’s me.”

“Exactly.”

The General spoke with Umeme, “You know what must be done, Umeme.”

“Yes, Father.”

“Remember, just find Kaldi,” The General placed an armored forehoof on his shoulder, “Once you’re clear, I’ll send in the cavalry.”

Prysm came up to me, her eyes were a leafy green, “Auntie and Uncle said I should thank you for saving me.”

“It’s really not a big deal,” I replied.

The filly’s eyes changed to a light blue as she looked away sheepishly, clearly not used to showing gratitude, “And I should thank you for going out to look for Mom.”

I placed my forehoof on the filly’s head and ruffled her mane a little, “Hey, your family saved me, so helping you is the least I could do.”

The filly swatted my forehoof away with a grumpy look walking away as Saluem came up.

“You might need this,” she reached into her saddle bag and handed me a roll of bandages, “Stay safe out there, okay?”

Saluem held onto my hoof a little longer than was needed before we crossed the large double doors and down the bridge.

The Outer Rim outside the Castle’s outer walls had a mote about ten feet deep and thirty feet wide lined with thousands of gnarly looking rusty spears that resembled thorny bushes. The grassy land beyond was cleared of trees and brush for about a hundred feet or so, revealing the hundreds of graves that loosely spiraled around the mote and nearly reached the distant treeline.

Mashhad stood at a grave marker with an old curved knife hanging on it, he had removed his hat and had it pressed it to his chest standing in silence for a while before he put his hat back on and joined us before we continued down a four lane wide crumbling road lined by thousands of rusted skeletons of ancient pre-war vehicles called the Long Stretch.

According to Mashhad the Long Stretch, also called Highway Nineteen, was one of only two throughways connecting the Horseshoe Bay to the rest of Equestria before the Last Day when the Swamps hadn’t been as far reaching as they were now. That gave me some pause, if the Swamps could spread, then just how out of date were my PipBuck’s maps? As we marched down the road, I noticed that the swamp air didn’t feel quite as cold and stagnant to my coat as it had been when I first entered two days ago, maybe I was just getting used to it.

The day mostly passed in relative silence as we traveled southwest through the rotting swampland, I heard many different animals calling off in the wilderness with the rare gunshot echo. We found a few bullet riddled road signs, _Caution, Pink Flu infected area, contact local Ministry of Peace officials immediately if you spot somepony with symptoms._

“Pink Flu?” I asked.

“Oh, those,” Umeme muttered, “Ignore those, the Pink Flu has mostly died out by now.”

“What was it?” I asked, noticing that the group seemed a little on edge.

“Nasty disease,” Mashhad answered, “Messes up your mind, covers you in pink boils that grow through your flesh and all other problems that follow.”

“Really, how did it happen?”

“I’ve heard theories, it might’ve been spread by plants like Killing Joke or maybe it was a military weapon that went crazy like Pink Cloud, nopony knows.”

“Killing Joke? Is that like Poison Joke?”

“Killing Joke came from Poison Joke,” Umeme continued, “stay the hell away from any vines with blue glowing flowers.”

“Painful experience?”

“It flayed me alive for several days before Aunt Saluem could cure it.”

“Shit,” I grimaced.

Nearing lunch time, we came across a sickly looking pony that was slowly stumbling alongside the road. Umeme had us stop and Mashhad wound the crank on his musket before lining up a shot. A scratchy beam of blue light loudly popped from the focuser and struck the pony squarely in their chest. As we came close, I noticed a very foul stench and that the pony’s coat was molting revealing blistering patches of skin, its mane and tail were but wispy strands and the flesh that wasn’t burned away by Mashhad’s musket was rotting or eaten away by animals and its genitals were missing so I couldn’t tell if it was male or female. The ancient military uniform draped over the remnants of its thin body was little more than putrid moldy fabric pockmarked by centuries of neglect, combat and the Swamps.

I heaved up my breakfast and Tahka laughed at me, “Never seen a zombie, huh?”

I whizzed a bit trying to get the bile from my throat and mouth before glaring at the Zebra, “A what?”

“Ghouls,” Mashhad muttered, taking his hat off and pressing it to his chest, “Folk that succumb to radiation and those whose minds rot away making them mindless animals, zombies. Swamp’s full of them, further south there’re herds dozens even hundreds strong that can overwhelm nearly anything, I’ve seen them even rip a young hydra apart.”

I forced myself to look down at the corpse wondering what their life must’ve been like to end up like they were.

We continued on from an Outcast town surrounded by marsh grass on the west side of a murky lake called Clearview. After eating a lunch of fresh water, carrots and apple slices, we continued on and came across a dozen trades ponies with a few two headed cows pulling a couple of enclosed wagons, the leader said they were headed for the Castle and north to a town in Baltimare called Inner Harbor. Umeme questioned them about any Foalbanks activity and they told us that something had attacked a couple of caravans further down the road. After bartering for a little bit with the caravan we continued on, it was late in the afternoon when we hit a bullet riddled worn road sign adorned with strung up old dolls, teddy bears, plastic pony heads and the rotting corpses of animals that once said, _De La Croix 3 miles._ But now the sign held a pair of crossed revolvers in bright orange paint with new words stenciled on, _FOALBANKS’ LAND! FUCK OFF!_

“Well, they certainly get to the point,” I muttered mostly to myself.

“This way,” Umeme said as the group headed off the road to a single hoof beaten path that led into the trees, “It’s not far off now.”

“Where’re we going?” I asked, falling in behind Ophia with Q’osk bringing up the rear.

“There’s an outpost nearby, they should have a boat,” Umeme answered.

We continued through the trees along some marshes for a few hours before the trees opened up revealing a small shack made of wood planks and a rusted sheet metal roof on the muddy shore of a small alcove of a large murky lake. A Swampfolk wearing a quilted coat and holding a hunting shotgun was sitting in a rusty lawn chair by a sputtering smokey campfire in a pit with what looked like a dog that growled at us. Umeme went up and spoke with the stallion for a bit while we hung back.

“Hey, Ophia,” I asked the mare quietly, “What’s with the red stripes?”

“Hey, Stable Dweller,” the mare muttered quietly, “Why the bloody nose?”

“Ophia, no,” Q’osk and Mashhad interrupted.

“He is just so-” Ophia started.

“He couldn’t have known,” the elderly stallion calmly remarked glaring at her.

Ophia glared at me for a while before she spoke, “Survive this fight and I just might tell you, Stable Dweller.”

I nervously nodded, the way she spat _Stable Dweller_ made my spine chill. Umeme waved to us and we sat down at the fire, the stallion passed around some wrinkly apples that tasted like bitter wet saw dust. I nervously glanced down at the animal, its body was made of twigs, tree bark and leaves.

“Who da Stable Dweller?” the stallion asked Umeme, “Ya sed id jus’ be yer group.”

“Nask, he killed Bitterchip,” Umeme replied dryly.

Nask looked up at me moldy mouth agape, “You killed-”

“Yeah,” I muttered.

“A Stable Dweller?”

“Yeah,” I muttered again.

“‘Bout time somepony took dat bastard,” the stallion muttered, “Didn’ tink id be a Stable Dweller.”

“Nask, is the boat ready?” Umeme interrupted much to my thanks, it was late in the evening and getting cold.

“Oh, yeah,” Nask answered, pointing a hoof at a rusty boat tied to a post on an old rotting dock.

“Alright,” Umeme said as the group stood and stepped over to the boat, I followed.

Getting on, Nask untied the boat as Tahka and Q’osk both took an oar and we pushed off from the dock and crossed the small alcove pointed toward some bright lights on the distant opposite shore of the massive lake.

Crossing the lake took a very long time, as I floated out Light and held it at the ready, Saluem’s words floated in my mind again.

Could I really do this? I looked down at the murky water and thought it over, I did say that I’d do anything to find Mom, but could I really kill somepony intentionally? From what I’d seen and heard of the Foalbanks they attacked any outsider or enslaved them. If I killed them then I could possibly make the Hayseed Swamps a little bit safer and the General assured me that he would tell me where Mom may have gone when we saved Kaldi.

I made up my mind.

“Umeme,” Mashhad muttered as he scoped out the lights on the approaching shoreline, “I count five sentries with a half dozen on the walls.”

“Right, you all know the drill, we’re here for Jackchip and Aunt Kaldi,” Umeme whispered, “Q’osk, stay with the boat. Mashhad, get up high and do what you do best. Iron Slug, you’re supporting Mashhad. Tahka, get on Jackchip’s boat and destroy it, your way. Ophia, you come with me.”

“Umeme,” Ophia started, “I thought-”

“Plans change.”

There was a noticeable pause before the group nodded as we touched down on the shore a ways up from the fenced in town. As the others got to work, Mashhad pointed a hoof at a very tall tree and began to scale it, the elderly Zebra was impossibly nimble as he almost leaped from branch to branch. I gulped hard and slowly started to climb after him. I nearly fell a couple of times when I nearly stepped on a few small animals but after what felt like an eternity, I finally made it up to Mashhad’s perch.

“Good to see that you’re in good shape,” the elderly sniper whined.

We were about thirty or so feet up from the ground and a bit above the tree canopy. The cold wind was pretty fierce and it took most of my strength to not fall.

“Here,” Mashhad muttered pulling out a small cylinder thing from one of his coat’s inner pockets, “Can you use a spyglass?”

I shook my head floating the tool over to me, the spyglass could extend a few inches or so with two glass lenses on either end.

“It is simple,” Mashhad explained, “You extend it out to full length and look through the smaller lens.”

I did as instructed and my view was a little clearer. From my perch and through the spyglass I looked out over the town on the island, really it was little more than a small number of old buildings and homes lining a single crumbling street with a tall leaning brick building, a church, on the opposite side. A couple dozen trailer homes, as Mashhad called them, made up the outer walls forming a loose semicircle that opened to the lake where an old looking paddle boat was moored at a guarded dock. The main gate bridge was guarded by a couple of Swampfolk lounging around at a smoldering campfire. I noticed a couple of weird shimmerings, like steam wafting from a pipe, behind the guards and without warning both guards were stabbed under their lumpy jaws by Umeme and Ophia who then dragged them off in the darkness before creeping across the metal bridge into the town. I looked around the walls some more and eventually spotted another shimmering headed toward the crumbling docks and the boat. Tahka grabbed a guard and dragged her back into the murky water. Another guard must’ve noticed the noise cause he was cautiously walking over the rail where his friend was just a moment before. Tahka swooped up from the water and stabbed the guard’s throat and dragged him off the boat before pulling himself over the railing and disappearing from my sight.

“They’re in, now we wait for the fun to start,” Mashhad muttered, lowering his musket.

I nodded and lowered the spyglass and took a moment to examine my surroundings, I noticed that after the almost stifling decay of the swamp floor the air up here was almost too clean. I looked around to get my bearings, even with the spyglass it was too dark for me to see any great distance south but I did notice a couple of faint lights coming from behind me to the northeast.

“High Town,” Mashhad muttered as he slowly cranked his musket creating a ball of dull blue light in the capacitor, “That light, it’s High Town up in Baltimare.”

“So tell me, Kid,” the sniper said, slowly cranking a small ball of blue light, “What’s life in a Stable like?”

“Pretty monotonous really,” I muttered, watching the ball shake and squirm about in its glass cage, “But it’s safe.”

“Anypony special there?”

I swallowed hard as I thought about Cobalt, the way she hesitated before she shot at me and her tears as the door closed shut, “Probably not anymore.”

“Right,” the sniper muttered, “I won’t pry, Kid, know that pain.”

There was a very long silence after that as we sat up there.

“How long have you been doing this?” I asked, wanting to break the stillness.

“Oh I’ve been with the Outcasts since the General’s father’s father let me in, General Amandla Pyrite Floren Quintus. I probably wasn’t too much older than Umeme.”

“Yeah?” I asked, “Where’re you from?”

“My tribe’s from Tortuga, it was a region of tropical islands that had very little connection to the Caesar of the Last Day, not like that saved us from being invaded multiple times. We were scattered across the Celestial and Lunar Seas shortly following the start of the Great War and we’ve continued on as merchants and pirates. I’m from a settlement in the western Dragonlands called Whore’s Gash. Long gone now.”

“What happened to it?” I asked, glancing down at the town.

“I don’t know, I believe that a Sea Dragon drowned the place.”

“Sea Dragon?” I asked, very puzzled, “I thought Dragons flew.”

“I’m sure they do, but Sea Dragons aren’t the flying ones, they’re said to be more like giant snakes nearly a mile long living in the deep seas eating whales and giant squids.”

“Wow,” I muttered, thinking about a monster miles long, I shivered.

“Yeah, and Sea ponies sing songs that hypnotise sailors and they take their seed to keep their queen full,” Mashhad chuckled.

I was taken aback for a second before glaring at the old sniper, “So, you’re just fucking with me now?”

“Not really, Kid. Sea Dragons did exist once, but not anymore. Their bones can be found occasionally out along the coasts and something did destroy Whore’s Gash, but I think it was actually poisonous gas from some underground sulfur pits upwind from the town. The Dragonlands are full of them, volcanoes and lava lakes, or slavers attacked and hauled them away somewhere.”

“Why would anypony want to live there?”

“Oh, the Dragons love it, Kid, see their lands weren’t bombed during the Last Day so there’s very little radiation or monsters.”

We must’ve been up there for close to a quarter hour talking quietly before Mashhad changed the subject, “Just a friendly bit of advice, Kid, I know you’re just doing this to find your Mater and all, understandable, she seemed like a nice enough mare when I spoke with her. But maybe you should also consider finding a place to settle down out here, Hell, the General’s gonna make you an Outcast on the spot when we find Kaldi and Saluem is unwed.”

“What?” I asked before nearly a full minute before I comprehended the words, “Wait, what?”

“I saw the way she looked at you when we left, Kid, I’m old enough to know when a mare sees a buck she might like.”

“S-she’s a bit older than me,” I deflected, trying to focus on anything else.

“When you get as old as me, Kid,” Mashhad laughed, “You may find that age is just a number.”

I felt my cheeks redden as I looked away and focused on a very interesting branch. I wasn’t going to think about the sniper’s joking words or about the way Saluem’s nice hips swayed as she walked, the way her pretty blue eyes and sweet smile lightened my heart a little, the way her very lovely scent made me think of sunshine and I most certainly wasn’t thinking about what her bare body must’ve looked like covered in sweat as we-

‘Fuck,’ I thought catching myself mid fantasy, ‘I’m a little hopeless, aren’t I?’

Don’t answer that.

A thunderous explosion down in the town ripped me from my thoughts, the paddle boat was a smoking fireball.

“Here we go, Kid,” Mashhad said as he shot a couple of Foalbanks.

I got out Light and took aim at a mangy mare who was galloping along the walls with a sawed off shotgun in her mouth. I shot off a couple of rounds, the first two struck just ahead of the mare but the third struck her glowing swollen neck causing her to tumble off the edge down into the murky water twenty feet below.

“Not bad, Kid,” Mashhad shouted over the beams he popped off killing a few more Foalbanks before he holstered his musket and started to climb down to the shore, “Come on.”

I nodded holstering Light, I wrapped myself in my magic. I sort of half floated/half fell to the shore below landing with a heavy thud that took my breath and left me with a face full of mud. I wiped off the mud and caught my breath before hurrying up the bank with the sniper to the open gate where Q’osk was firing his machine guns across the metal bridge. Mashhad crossed the bridge and climbed up the walls for a better perch.

I brought up my Eyes Forward Sparkle, a compass spell on my PipBuck that would tell me the direction of anypony relative to me with yellow markers meaning they were neutral and red markers meaning they were hostile.

Right now there were seven targets dead ahead.

I’d only used the spell a couple of times before now but I noticed that the marker on Q’osk was green giving me his name and his vitals. I glanced up to Mashhad and noticed that he was marked by green as well but his marker didn’t tell me how high up he was.

“With me, Stable!” Q’osk shouted past his helmet and his battle saddle’s trigger, “We clear the town!”

I followed behind him as we crossed, the massive stallion steadily marched forward seemingly unfazed by the bullets that bounced off and dented his armor. Mashhad exchanged shots with snipers on the roofs.

“Irrumator!” Q’osk shouted in between firing his machine guns, bullets ripping through a Foalbanks taking cover in a house.

“We’s eatin’ good t’night!” a skinny stallion up by the church cackled as he shot off his lever rifle.

I took aim at him, three bullets tore into his chest and one bullet sparked on his rifle. I felt a sharp sting on my foreleg just above my PipBuck and I targeted a second mare covering behind a dumpster holding a lever shotgun in her hooves, I fired a round that blew a small chunk of her head away painting the wall behind her. I fell behind Q’osk to reload Light, as I racked the slide back I spotted a third stallion coming up behind us with a couple of bottles of black liquid with lit rag corks in his mouth. 

“Ya done fucked up, Drylander!” he shouted as he was about to throw the bottle, “Dis is our land!”

I reflexively shot off a couple of rounds at him and nicked a bottle. To my surprise the black liquid went up in flames barbecuing the stallion’s face. He shrieked, stumbling in the mud and ran over to a metal barrel by a house and dunked his head in it causing steam to bloom around him as his limp body crumpled in the mud. When the smoke cleared, fourteen bullet riddled or burned corpses littered the town street. Catching my breath I looked around but I didn't spot any more enemies in the range of my E.F.S., I rolled up my sleeve to check and saw some blood starting to seep out of a shallow graze. I took out the roll of bandages from my saddle bag, tightly wrapped the wound and rolled down my torn sleeve. I’d need proper armor soon if I was going to be doing this frequently.

“Check this house, Stable!” Q’osk shouted, pointing an armored forehoof at a ranch house, “I will cover you!”

I opened the door and vomited into the muddy street as the pungent stench of decay invaded my nostrils.

Inside the room was a gruesome scene. Six children were tied to soiled mattresses and chained to the old wood walls, they were stripped of their clothing, stained in filth and obviously they’d all been raped. A scrawny colt weakly glanced up at me, I was horrified to see that his lips had been crudely sewn shut by red thread.

“It’s gonna be ok,” I tried to say through the pungent air, “We’re gonna save you.”

The colt weakly blinked before he glanced over his shoulder at a door in the corner. My E.F.S. told me that there was somepony inside, holding Light at the ready, I cracked open the door and peered inside. A bloated stallion was lounging in a rocking chair snoring, the bloody severed head of a filly with her mouth lodged on to his lumpy cock and swollen balls while her limp body was laid on a nearby moldy mattress with a sickening mixture of blood and glowing jizz dribbling from her hindquarters.

I pushed the door open and stepped in, I carefully wrapped my magic around the filly’s head and lifted her off and to the side with her body. I pointed Light at the stallion’s genitals and pulled the trigger.

The stallion jumped up screaming and grabbing at the pulpy remains of his crotch as he slumped over on to the floor.

He glanced up at me as if just now noticing that I was there, “Ya fucker! Ah’ll scalp ya fer dat!”

“Suffer,” I muttered as Light drowned out his words.

I carefully picked up the filly’s head and body before I cut the other kids free but only three of them were still alive, the colt and two fillies (one Zebra) followed me out. Tahka had come up from the docks still soaked from the lake, he and Q’osk were turning over the bodies in the street. I didn’t pay them any attention.

“What’re you doing, Kid?” Mashhad asked, looking at the children.

“I’m saving them,” I muttered flatly.

“We’re just here for Kaldi and Jackchip, Kid,” the elderly sniper started almost a little too rehearsed for my liking, tilting his hat down, “Their lives-”

“I’m saving them!” I shouted, slamming my hoof down hard enough to crack the road getting Tahka and Q’osk’s attentions, “I don’t give a flying fuck if you all have a problem with it, I’m not leaving them here to suffer at the hooves of these monsters!”

After seeing first hoof what these Swampfolk did to outsiders, I no longer saw them as ponies, no these were parasites festering in the body of a dying beast.

And I was going to kill them all.

“The General will have strong words, Kid.”

“I don’t care if he even goes back on our deal, at least I’ll know I did the right thing, besides, plans change.”

Q’osk stepped up to the Zebra filly and took off his helmet, the filly’s bloodshot eyes widened seeing that the stallion’s stripes matched her’s, Q’osk then asked her something in a strange sounding language and the filly nodded verimently.

“Mashhad,” Q’osk started, turning back to the sniper, “She is Wenzi.”

“It doesn’t matter, Q’osk,” the sniper rebutted, “You’ve been banished for a year now-”

“She is Wenzi,” the stallion interrupted, staring down the sniper, he berated him in the same dialect as before.

“Where’re you from?” Tahka asked the other filly.

She timidly got up and reached out her foreleg mimicking holding up something.

“Friendship City?” Tahka asked, a little shocked, “You’re from Manehattan?”

“Mashhad,” The fighter turned on his group mate, “We need to help them.”

The sniper looked like he was near his wits end, “Tahka, I know you’re-”

“We can still clear the town and besides, plans change.”

Mashhad stared at his group mates in disbelief for a long moment before finally saying, “I won’t stop you, Kid, but I won’t defend your choices either.”

“Fine,” I muttered looking back at the kids.

The colt was busy looking over the smaller filly who had fresh looking circular burns where her glyph should’ve been.

Tahka got out his knife, “I can cut those stitches for you.”

They looked up at him scared for a moment before the Zebra filly took a reluctant shaky step forward.

“Hold still, please,” he requested as he carefully slipped the knife tip between her thin lips and slowly sliced the thread one by one, “Almost done… and there.”

The filly’s lips parted as the last thread was cut, she looked up at him very sheepishly, a lot like how Scotch first looked at me.

“Can you speak?” I asked.

The filly shook her head as she opened her muzzle slightly revealing that most of her tongue had been cut out and the stump had been haphazardly cartorized. I looked at the other two who both nodded.

“Great,” I muttered as Tahka cut the threads from the other two, “One more reason to hate these monsters!”

“Where’re your parents?” Tahka asked the kids.

A filly pointed a forehoof at a building across the street, a mare’s bullet riddled body slumped against the wall beside the door with a lever gun.

“In there?” I asked, the filly nodded.

“There, Mashhad,” Tahka said, “We find their parents and bring them back to Clearview or even the Castle, simple.”

Tahka and I entered the building as Q’osk and Mashhad watched the kids outside. The building had rows of miss-matching tables covered in platters full of foul smelling and grilled meat and fat sausages, all leading to a door on the opposite wall.

To my stomach’s growing disgust I realized this was the cafeteria.

I took a step inside and three blips popped up on my E.F.S. as something whizzed past my ear.

“Git outta muh home!” a mare shouted, overturning a table knocking over the platters spilling the gorey food on the floor.

“Ya done fucked up, Ziggas!” a stallion shouted, jumping up from behind a table with a fucking shovel in his mouth as a second mare with a sunken chest brought out a shotgun revolver.

The first mare reloaded a lever rifle and took a second shot at Tahka. Backpedaling out the door, I pulled up Light and shot off a few rounds into the table, two of the rounds splintered the old wood but the third and fourth rounds clipped her head as I hit the floor. Tahka concentrated his fire on the stallion running up with the spear, the first explosion took off his hooves causing him to stumble and slam into a table and the second ripped through a chunk of his neck.

The second mare dropped her shotgun as she backed up from her cover and tried to make a run for the door, “Chop!” but the last rounds from Light’s magazine stopped her dead in her tracks.

I picked myself up from the floor and reloaded Light, looking myself over, I noticed that a bit of blood was seeping through my bandages.

Tahka carefully crossed the room and stopped at the door, “Ready?”

Suddenly a fourth blip appeared and the door slammed open nearly hitting Tahka, a hulking stallion as big as Q’osk wearing a bloody apron with dozens of knives and cleavers came charging out wielding a long bloody knife in his mouth. His forelegs, shoulders and neck were all swollen making him look like a wall of muscle covered in rough scaly cysts, massive glowing pink boils and pustules. 

“CHOP! CHOP!” the stallion shouted like a maniac.

I reflexively held up Light and shot him twice in his swollen chest, but he kept up his charge colliding squarely into my knocking the wind out of me and breaking my concentration on Light. A sharp splitting pain shot through my side as I hit the floor hard, the bone handle of the stallion’s knife was sticking out from under my barding.

The manic chef loomed over me with a sickening grin of rotting teeth, “Choppity chop.”

“Slug!” Tahka shouted as he threw himself onto the chef, knocking him to the side into a few tables.

“Choppy!” the bleeding chef shouted, grabbing a knife trying to slash at the Zebra riding him.

Even though Tahka almost danced around the bigger assailant, the chef definitely had strength on his as he bucked his hind hooves into the fighter’s gut causing him to spit up blood.

“Choppy choppity chop chop,” the chef slurred with gut splitting cruelty passed the knife clenched in his teeth.

Ignoring the seven inch blade in my innards and the screaming pain in my mind, I grabbed at Light but suddenly Mashhad grabbed the pistol and shot the chef’s flank.

“CHOP!” the cannibal shouted, dropping the knife and turning on the sniper, eyes flaring.

The sniper emptied Light’s magazine into the chef’s side, but somehow the chef remained standing, if only barely. The stallion glared down the sniper like he was like the slabs of cooked meat around us.

“Just fucking die!” I shouted.

The chef didn’t say anything instead he just stood there unflinchingly, Tahka slowly got up and Mashhad pushed on the stallion, after a tense moment… he collapsed in a bloody heep.

“I think he did, Kid.”

Mashhad handed me Light and helped me to my hooves, we staggered out to a smaller building a couple of doors down.

“Careful, Kid,” the sniper said as he helped me onto a bed before leaving.

He came back shortly with a couple bottles of a bubbly bubblegum pink liquid and a roll of bandages in his mouth. In the absolute gray washed misery of this hellhole, the healing potion looked almost comically out of place. The sniper carefully helped me out of my barding and pulled down my suit exposing the bleeding wound to the air.

“Ready?”

I nodded and he yanked out the knife. Whiteness flooded my vision and I think I heard a distant voice screaming in agony before I blacked out.

When I came to, Mashhad had finished wrapping bandages around me and the healing potion bottles lay empty on the floor.

“You good, Kid?” the sniper asked, patting my shoulder.

“Yeah,” I groaned sitting up slightly, “Thanks.”

“Maybe you should take a moment to rest.”

“No, we still need to find those kids’ parents.”

“They’re dead, Kid.”

I looked up at the sniper for any sign of joking, but he was stoney faced.

“Tahka found them while you were out, skinned and hanging up on meat hooks in that room that chef came from.”

I nodded and looked around the room, it was small with a few dirty beds and medical equipment, faded pre war posters hung on the walls, one of them showed a mare wearing a coat like Saluem’s tending to a fallen bloody soldier while a second offered covering fire from some target, _Join the Ministry of Peace today and make a difference_ , was below the scene with the same pink butterfly and red cross. Another poster showed a battleworn soldier with a machine gun holding out a hoof to the viewer, _Don’t let them run dry. Buy war bonds today!_ , with a group of gears and sparks in an apple outline bisected by a sword.

Tahka was speaking to the kids a couple of beds down and Q’osk stood guard at the door.

“Hey,” I cocked a hoof at the hulking guard, “You said Q’osk had been banished, why?”

“Yeah, well you see, Kid, you know how the General has his guards watching him?”

I nodded.

“Well, the Caesars had something like that, guards called The Praetorian Order. During the War, Praetorians were some of the best soldiers the Caesar had at his command, sending them on sensitive missions that normal soldiers aren’t equipped for. From what I’ve heard, a Praetorian might’ve been responsible for destroying Manehattan during the Last Day. Any case, Praetorians train their whole lives for even a chance at standing at the Caesar's side and once they’re chosen, they serve till their deaths. Because there are only thirteen at any given time, if a soldier wants to be a Praetorian they must kill the one from their tribe to take their place.”

The sniper glanced at Q’osk, “Q’osk served for nearly forty years, the longest any in the Order has ever served in its history. He has killed dozens of challengers, but finally one day, the Caesar ordered one last challenger to take Q’osk’s place. Upon seeing the challenger though, Q’osk refused to fight so he lost, but his challenger refused to kill him.”

“Why?”

“Because she couldn’t kill her father.”

I looked over to Q’osk, remembering the mare he’d spoken with back at the Castle.

“So, Q’osk and Q’ale were both banished and they found their way through the Swamps up to us last summer.”

Suddenly something exploded outside bathing everything in orange light, Mashhad jumped up and ran to the door, “A signal flare!”

“What?” I asked, getting up and stepping to the door, a ball of orange light burned in the sky above the town.

“Kid,” Mashhad grabbed me by my collar, “We have ten minutes tops before dozens of Foalbanks and spirites know what else comes galloping out of the woodwork.”

Shit.

Tahka stayed in the hospital with the children while Q’osk, Mashhad and I ran up to inspect the church, gunfire and explosions came from inside. Q’osk bucked in the door and Mashhad and I filed in only to find the entrance had a single dead Foalbanks with a revolver slumped against the blood covered double doors. My E.F.S. flashed five more red markers and two new green markers with names, Umeme and Ophia. I opened the doors and was greeted by a very grizzly scene, the skinned hides and severed heads of dozens and dozens of ponies and even a few Zebras were pinned up on the walls like sick trophies, thousands of lit candles were melting on the windowsills of the six large broken windows of stained glass frescos of long dead mares. The slaughtered corpses of a dozen Foalbanks littered the room, some were slumped against wooden pillars holding up a balcony or behind makeshift barricades. A mare was thrown screaming over a balcony several feet up and cracked her head open on a wide stone basin in front of a pair of statues of two mares that had long horns and wings illuminated by the orange light from the signal flare pouring in from a large hole in the ceiling. The mare on the right was made of polished white stone with a blazing sun cutie mark while the shorter one on the left was made of polished black stone and had a crescent moon.

“Celestia and Luna,” I whispered as I approached the statues of the Goddesses.

I wondered why they were here of all places? And why were they so damn clean? I stared up at the two goddess sisters who gave their lives to try to protect my ancestors, I wondered if they were truly watching us or if they’d really abandoned us like Saluem thought.

I pushed the thought from my mind.

“Kid,” Mashhad got my attention, nodding to a door behind the statues.

We entered a small back room that was full of supplies, a couple dozen boxes of food, a few drums of water, three dozen racks of guns (mostly revolvers, shotguns and lever rifles) and a dozen crates of different ammunition. A bullet riddled bloated mare was slumped in front of a barred door by a steep staircase with a smoking lever shotgun.

After a quick glance around I took a step inside.

_BEEP…_

What’s that?

_BEEP…_

I looked around for the source of the sudden sound.

_BEEP…_

I looked down at the floor and spotted a small orange disk just to the side of the doorframe, a red light was flashing at an increasing speed. _BEEP… BEEP BEEP BEEP!_

A Frag Mine! I dropped Light and focused my magic around the beeping disk and quickly threw it over my shoulder into the main room just as Mashhad pulled the door shut seconds before it exploded.

_BOOM!_

The force tore the door off its frame and myself along with it. I was thrown clear across the storage room and slammed into the opposite wall with the door fragments collapsing on top of me, “Ugh!”

Despite the fact that my ears were ringing and my knife wound was buzzing, I was far more shocked than injured. Slowly cracking my eyes, I blinked out the dust before stiffly getting up on my wobbly hooves. I shook off the dust and rubble, thankful for the barding. I looked around for Mashhad, a few of the shelves had been knocked over spilling their contents on the floor. I found the elderly sniper collapsed under one of them. I didn’t need my E.F.S. to tell that he wasn’t doing very well, the large gash in his side said enough. I grunted and heaved trying to lift the shelves, but I couldn’t budge it even with my magic.

“What happened?” Q’osk was standing in the open door frame looking around, “I heard an explosion.”

“Help me lift this,” I grunted.

As Q’osk stepped over I stepped aside and grunting with some effort propped the shelves up on his shoulder. I grabbed Mashhad by his collar and dragged him out before Q’osk dropped it, the floor dished slightly under its weight. 

_CRACK!_

I dug through the fallen supplies pulling out a yellow box with a pink butterfly and red cross, focusing my strained magic I loosened the lid before ripping it off. Inside were two healing potions and some more bandages.

“Can you handle this?” Q’osk asked.

“Yes, I’m not a doctor but I should be fine.”

Q’osk nodded and returned to the main room. I pulled off Mashhad’s coat, pulled out my flask and poured what water remained into the gash. Popping open a bottle, I poured the liquid into the now cleaner wound, it slowly began its work stitching up the torn flesh of the sniper. As I wrapped him in the bandages, my E.F.S. told me that his vitals were at the very least slowly recovering. I grimaced at my lack of medical skills compared to Mom as I pulled the coat over the stallion and he cracked open an eye and looked up at me.

“Kid?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be right back.”

Looking around I found Light still by the door frame, stepping over I picked up the pistol and to my surprise it not only looked unharmed by the damage around me it looked spotless. I felt an odd tingling at the edge of my consciousness, like somepony was tapping on the opposite end of a very long table.

“Kid?” Mashhad’s voice tore me back, I looked over my shoulder, “I said, take my musket and find Umeme and Ophia, we need to get out of here.”

I holstered Light and picked up the strange magical weapon, despite being thrown across the room it was still in impressive shape considering. Turning the crank three full turns with my magic, a small scratchy ball of magical energy manifested in the glass cage.

“Go, Kid!” Mashhad shouted at me.

I quickly climbed the stairs and ended up on the corpse ridden balcony over the main room, below me Tahka had brought in the kids and Q’osk was busy dragging out a few of the barricades.

“Hey, what’re you doing?” I called down.

“We will not leave in time, so we must prepare!” the stallion shouted back.

“Tahka, Mashhad is injured in the next room.”

The stallion nodded and I turned my focus on crossing to the door without stepping on the corpses.

The small room was bathed in orange light, a clean bed tucked in the corner with a quilt made from flannel triangles and a large caliber lever rifle leaned against it with a holster bandolier. The walls were decorated by ancient photographs of long dead ponies and the pelts of exotic animals. In the center was Umeme and Ophia, I can’t really say what I was expecting the Foalbanks’ leader, this Jackchip to look like, but somehow I wasn’t expecting the elderly Unicorn leaning back in a wheelchair. He had the same cancerous pink cysts, glowing pustrals and lumpy tumors covering his sunken body as the rest of the Swampfolk here and his horn had a long jagged crack causing it to slant at an odd angle. His brown leather jacket hung on his thin shoulders and the pelt of a Zebra covered the stumps of his missing hindlegs like a blanket.

“Tell me where she is!” Umeme shouted, grabbing the stallion by his jacket’s collar.

“Ya Ziggas broke inta muh home, murder muh kin,” the stallion wrapped gray magic around a clay jug with a cork top, “And now ya have da gaul t’ make demands of me?”

“Umeme, we don’t have time,” Ophia said, placing a hoof on Umeme’s shoulder.

“Ya’d best listen t’ ya whore, Zigga!” the stallion cackled.

Umeme’s forehoof struck the stallion’s muzzle with a hard crack, a couple of blackened teeth scattered across the floor.

“Umeme!” Ophia shouted, grabbing him by his forelegs and pulled him back before he could do anything else.

I stepped forward to the stallion and stared down at the pathetic creature. He wiped the blood from his muzzle on his limp jacket sleeve and glanced up at me.

“A Stable Dwellah, whatcha doin’ with dese dumb Ziggas?”

“Looking at a pathetic leech,” I felt myself say.

“Got some bite in ya?” The stallion cackled again, “Bitterchip’ll break dat outta ya when he gits back.”

“Bitterchip?” I asked, the orange light faded and sputtered out leaving the room mostly dark, “Oh, you mean a really ugly pedophile, yeah, you might be waiting for a while.”

“Whatcha ya say?”

“I killed him.”

The stallion stared blankly at me for a long time before it seemed to dawn on him, “YA WHAT!”

A sudden wave of magical energy slammed us back against the walls and shook the room violently, I couldn’t move! The stallion drew a long bladed knife as he wheeled himself up to me and pressed his knife into my neck. I felt a trickle of blood!

“YA MURDERED MUH BOY?!” the stallion roared, horn flaring with energy, “AH’MA RIP YA LIMB FROM LIMB AND SKIN YA ALIVE!”

He grabbed my foreleg and twisted it around dislocating it. I strained against the magic and pain and saw Light on the floor by the bed, focusing my magic as best I could, I slowly pointed the pistol toward the stallion and pulled the trigger.

_BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!_

The stallion’s head exploded into bloody chunks painting myself and the wall, we fell to the floor. My foreleg hung limpy at my side, I struggled to catch my breath. Ophia stepped over, carefully grabbed my foreleg and twisted it back into place and the pain ended almost instantly. Umeme glared down at the corpse and pumped a couple more rounds into it, he picked up the Zebra pelt, rolled it up and carefully placed it in his saddlebag.

“Let’s go,” Umeme muttered, picking up his rifle and brushing past me.

“Wait, what about your aunt?”

“Kaldi’s not here,” Ophia answered, handing Light to me.

“What?” I asked flatly, “You mean after all this?”

“We never guaranteed she’d be here, it was an educated guess.”

“Then, we wasted our time here?”

The mare didn’t, instead she followed behind Umeme.

I looked over at the rifle beside the bed, I picked it up and inspected it. It was in amazing condition with a scope and used a caliber called 45-70 Gov’t based on the bullets in the bandolier holster and the four small boxes beside it, each had a six pointed star with the words, _Silver Star’s 45-70 Gov’t 20 rounds_ on it. I slipped them into my saddlebag before slipping the bandolier on and adjusted it to fit better and slipped the rifle into the holster at my side above my saddlebag. I had a strong feeling I was gonna need a stronger weapon than just Light if I was gonna be fighting more tonight. My PipBuck pinged, it labeled the rifle as a _Brush Gun_.

Though Umeme walked to the stairs wordlessly, I had a strong feeling that he was furious.

“What happened?” Tahka asked as we entered the storage room, “Where’s Kaldi?”

Umeme brushed past him and the kids without a word with Ophia following.

“Jackchip’s dead,” I answered, handing the musket back to the sniper.

Mashhad groaned as he stood up, “And Kaldi?”

“Not here.”

The sniper lowered his hat, “Spirits guide her.”

“Well, at least we can get the kids back.”

As we left the room to join Q’osk, I noticed a rustling sound behind me when I reached the doorframe. Glancing around the destroyed room I couldn’t see what it was so I stepped back inside and flicked on my E.F.S. a couple of blips flickered to my right behind some crates with red triangles painted on them. I heard some more rustling sounds as I pulled out Light and stepped up. I wrapped a crate in my magic and pushed it aside finding the source.

A small colt struggling to hold up a large revolver in his mouth and a small filly sat trembling in a puddle that smelled like piss.

“Are you two ok?” I asked.

The kids didn’t answer for some reason, instead the colt stared up at me with mixtures of what looked like anger but mostly fear while the filly pressed her face into the colt’s shoulder. In the dim light of the room I finally noticed something wrong about them, they had small tumors and cysts ebbing just under their coats and manes.

I lowered Light and stared down at the kids trembling below me, they were Foalbanks!

A thought struck me in that moment, despite how many stallions and mares we’d killed here, I hadn’t seen a single Foalbanks kid! Saluem’s words flooded my mind again, the way she had nearly cried when she confided in me. All of my anger toward these parasites faltered as the filly started to sob into the colt’s shoulder, did these kids really deserve the same punishment as the rest of their family? Or was it even worse to leave them alive to fend for themselves alone?

What were their crimes?

I glanced over my shoulder and after making sure I was alone, I moved the crates back covering up the kids.

“Stay quiet,” I muttered and turned to leave.

Only to see Ophia standing silently in the door frame glaring me down.

“Uh… Something wrong?” I asked, trying my best to not appear suspicious.

The mare stayed silent as she glanced from me to the crates, a shiver sparked up my spine as I realized she knew what I was doing!

“What did you find?” the mare demanded, pointing a forehoof at the crates.

“Uh, there was some medical supplies I used on Mashhad, I thought I could find some more.”

“Leave the supplies here,” the mare ordered me in a low voice, “The Foalbanks sometimes poison what they’ve stolen to kill desperate Drylanders. We need to prepare.”

With that, the mare turned and left, I slowly released a breath I hadn’t known that I’d been holding in when she was out of earshot.

When I stood in the main room, I glanced back at the statues of the Goddesses, “I suppose I couldn’t blame either of you if you really have abandoned us.”

Outside, Tahka was busy moving corpses around the street in odd places leading up to the church, Q’osk was setting up barricades at odd intervals, Mashhad was checking sightlines while Umeme and Ophia were talking.

“It’s not your fault, Umeme,” Ophia whispered, placing a forehoof on his shoulder, “We’ll find her.”

I stepped up to them, “What’re you doing?”

Umeme stiffly turned to me, “Where the hell were you?!”

I blinked a couple of times at the outburst, “Supporting Mashhad, like you told me?”

“Umeme,” Ophia interrupted, standing herself between us, “He isn’t to blame.”

“Then go help Tahka,” the stallion muttered, “enough to worry about without those damn kids.”

I shook my head as I walked down the street to Tahka, “What’re you doing?” I asked cautiously this time.

“Traps,” the stallion explained as he planted a frag mine in the mud and carefully dropped a corpse over it, “Raiders do stuff like this all the time in the Heartlands.”

“So how does it work?” I asked as the stallion prepped another mine, “You move the corpse and set off the explosive?”

“Right on the caps,” the stallion muttered as he moved another corpse into place in front of the cafeteria.

“How long have you been here?”

“With the Outcasts?” the stallion zoned out for a second before answering, “A few years now, definitely after Tyn was born.”

“What did you do beforehand?”

“I was in a gang down in Manehattan, we would hit travelers mostly and this one time I rigged up a baby carriage with explosives and Maddyx had the idea of putting a dead foal and a recording of crying to seal the deal, we killed some dumb mare with it.”

The stallion chuckled to himself for a while before I continued, “Why did you stop?”

The stallion looked up from the mine, “I saw one of your Goddesses.”

“What?”

“I’ll tell you what, if we survive this I’ll tell my life over some drinks.”

“Sounds fair.”

I sat down by the hospital and prepared myself. I opened the brush gun’s loading gate and chamber, upon seeing the magazine tube under the sixteen inch long hexagonal barrel was empty I loaded in bullets one at a time counting each one, by the end I counted eleven bullets plus one in the chamber. The group got in position and prepared their weapons. I held up the brush gun and looked through the scope. The swamp beyond the bridge had gone unnervingly still, I felt my heartbeat thump in my ears. Suddenly a signal flare shot up and a ball of orange burned in the sky as a wild howling shot through the trees.

“Get ready!” Umeme shouted.

I looked through the scope again and saw dozens and dozens of shadows illuminated by the flare cautiously approaching Tahka and Q’osk’s positions. Just as the first of the Foalbanks reached Tahka’s traps, he set them off.

_BOOM! BOOM!_

Fire and rubble and mangled bodies flew up across the bridge and Q’osk got up and fired on the horde as they fell back. The Foalbanks charged the bridge, and we opened fire. The brush gun kicked into my shoulder with every S.A.T.S. shot, the 45-70 Gov’t rounds were almost thunderous compared to Light. I fired all twelve shots and struck six targets but only killed four, reloading the gun I racked the lever and took aim at the horde. I fired all my shots again and killed seven targets this time. A few shots hit my barricade and I ducked down and reloaded.

_BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!_

More of Tahka’s traps went off slightly slowing down the horde, Tahka jumped over the barricade with Mashhad who then fell back to Umeme and Ophia’s barricade. I covered Q’osk as he ran up to my own barricade, four more Foalbanks collapsed and were trampled by those behind them. Q’osk had just reached me when I noticed something that came flying up behind the stallion, striking him and sending me flying back.

_BOOM!_

I felt my body slam into the mud and tasted blood in my mouth and every inch of my body burned and protested, my eyes flew open and I looked around. Through the fire and shrapnel I thought I saw Tahka grappling in the mud with a Foalbanks for a shovel spear, Umeme might’ve been covering Ophia from a flanking group, I heard the crackling pop of Mashhad’s musket return beams with a sniper on a roof and I know I saw Q’osk lying a ways down from me. I pulled my stubborn hooves under me and dragged my limp body through the mud and blood and over the mangled corpses of slain Foalbanks.

“Q’osk!” I felt myself shout, shaking at the stallion but he didn’t respond, his armor had caved into his side where he’d been struck by that missile.

“Run, Stable!” the stallion weakly grunted, “I am dead weight!”

“No, think about your daughter!”

“Run!” he weakly shouted before he slumped in the mud.

A red heat flooded my vision and something heavy thudded in my ears making the world nearly silent as everything slowed to a near standstill. I unhooked one of Q’osk’s machine guns from the battle saddle, grabbed the bite in my mouth and glared down the charging horde as they reached the bridge, these filthy parasites who raped and murdered and ate anypony that wasn’t one of them.

“CELESTIA AND LUNA GANGRAPE YOU ALL WITH THEIR HORNS!” a voice shouted as I bit down on the trigger.

I didn’t even aim, I just held down the trigger as a silent hornet cloud of lead ripped into the horde, blood, innards and mangled bodies to fly every which way. I don’t remember how long the storm lasted, a minute maybe just shy of an eternity, but the machine gun eventually ran out of bullets and the barrel was left glowing a bright white smoking in the cold air. I released the gun, my vision and hearing slowly returned as the world sped up back to normal. As exhaustion and blood loss finally slammed into me, I willingly embraced the darkness.

I felt an odd weightlessness as I opened my eyes and looked around, I was sitting on a chair in a featureless space. I stood and the chair vanished.

“Who are you?” a low feminine voice asked behind me.

Whirling around I spotted a middle aged looking Pegasus mare dressed in an old but well cared for looking sky blue and cloud gray Enclave uniform with a silver wreath on a couple of black patches on her collar. She was sitting behind a desk with a terminal and a framed photograph of a young filly hugging a stallion and she was holding a clipboard with papers in her forehoof, she looked up at me incredibly confused. Her heavily silver streaked dark fuschia mane was long and pulled into a tri braid and tied off with an old red ribbon and pulled over her shoulder, it complimented her light lilac coat and light cerulean eyes.

“How the hell did you get in here?” the mare shouted briskly, pulling out a 45 auto pistol, “Guards! Guards!”

“What?” I asked, looking around I wasn’t in the space anymore, against all probability and I still question how this exactly happened, I was in an old looking office room.

I glanced out a window to my side and saw a sprawling cityscape overgrown with foliage and streets flooded with dark water. 

“Lt Colonel! Ma’am, are you alright?” A couple of swift bangs came from the door behind the desk before it slammed open and three Pegasi guardsponies wearing matching uniforms burst in and drew modified magical energy rifles at me.

“Shit!” I shouted, diving out of the way just as three orange beams popped and scorched the place I had been mere seconds before.

I reached to pull out Light, but to my horror I was unarmed, just my Stable suit. In my moment of confusion, one of the guards popped a beam that hit me squarely in my shoulder. I screamed in agony as the orange beam melted through the leather of my suit and roasted my hide, leaving a nasty smell in the burnt air and the mare and her guards were on top of me in a flash. 

“Uh…” I gulped hard staring up at the mare thinking of what to say, “Take me to your leader?”

My eyes shot open and I looked around frantically, I wasn’t in the office anymore, somehow I was back in Dela Crow on one of the beds in the hospital. The blaring pain in my shoulder was gone and I felt fine.

“You’re alive,” Umeme was sitting in a chair beside me, “Had us worried there.”

“Umeme?” I asked, sitting up on my elbow, “What happened?”

My body felt far better and I noticed Mashhad and the children were sitting about the room, “Where’s Q’osk?”

“We won, that’s what happened, but… we lost Q’osk. His wounds were too deep for the sparse supplies here and he wouldn’t have made it to the Castle.”

“What?” I asked, noticing the shape hidden under a bed sheet, I felt a strange hollowness stab my heart.

“We found a wagon, so we’ll bring him back to the Castle for a proper burial… and for Q’ale to say her goodbyes, of course.”

“I’m sorry-”

“No,” The stallion held up a hoof, “this was my doing, if we’d just looked for Aunt Kaldi instead of wiping out the town, Q’osk would still be alive. We leave in an hour’s time.”

He helped me up, “Thank you for being there with him in his last moments, Iron Slug.”

I took the hour of peace to look inside a side room, it had an old desk with a couple of bookcases full of books and a terminal, between the shelves of one of the bookcases was a locked case of thick glass with the bones of a Pegasus skeleton inside.

The name _Dock Fair-in-height_ was written in an old black marker below the lock. I glanced over the books, many of them were volumes of something called _The Canterlot Journal of Health_ and were about Pre War medicine and techniques for surgery and applying healing spells with a great number of notes written in the margins, another book was called _L Weber’s Guides to the Horseshoe Bay and the Hayseed Swamp_ which was about the local plant life and how they could be used in medicine and there was a message written on the inside cover, 

_Dr Fahrenheit,_

_I always knew you’d have a glorious future ahead of you, I mean, Head Researcher for the Ministry of Peace? Especially so soon after ending your stay at the Our Lady of Mercy up in Baltimare, marvelous, simply marvelous. I expect to hear amazing things from you._

_Dr Brierberry_

Of all the books that caught my attention though was a gray tome with a black pony skull on the cover, opening it to the cover page I read, _The Wasteland Survival Guide, Horseshoe Bay Edition. By Ditzy Doo._

I levitated the books that were in the best condition off the shelves and carefully placed them in my saddle bag, three in total, Saluem would make the best use of these no doubt. I turned on the terminal, most of the information was corrupted beyond retrieval, but there were a handful of entries in the whole list I could access, one toward the top was dated about a year before the Last Day and the last one was dated decades after.

_Terminal of Doctor Fahrenheit, Former Head Researcher of the Ministry of Peace_

_Entry 1_

_I’m going to die here, aren’t I?_

_I’ve practiced medicine for almost years now, I’ve single-hoofed save hundreds of soldiers in her Highnesses armies and had a Ministry’s worth of funding to experiment with, now I’m stuck in some backwater town full of inbred hics in a fucking swamp trying to deal with Pink Flu while the rest of my fellows are busy with the MoP! All because some fucking no name intern from some pathetic rock farm town had the absolute gaul to feel offended when I had ‘allegedly’ asked her out on a date and claimed to authorities that I ‘supposedly’ took ‘liberties’ without her consent?_

_The fucking cunt and her friend were even grinning when they fired me!_

_Funny how life fucks you._

_If there’s any justice left in the world, Peachy Pie will suffer!_

_The Mayor, Drawchip, has been very accommodating yes, but the old geezer still thinks that leeches can cure Tuberculosis!_

_I’m going to die here, aren’t I?_

_At least I won’t have to listen to Red Heart bitch anymore._

_Entry 14_

_Apparently, Hippocampus Energy is building pumps to get at the oil and natural gas deposits all over the Swamps. A lot of towns and families are furious, the Knifes, the Packers, the Onions and now even Mayor Chips have requested that I assist them in taking down the company to save their land from a possible disaster like down in Fillydelphia and Trottingham. He didn’t like my answer that I’m a stallion of medicine and not a soldier, but he did accept it._

_I know that coal prices are steep and Equestria needs the infrastructure if we’re going to win the War, but I’ve seen Hippocampus’ track record for employee injuries and environmental problems._

_What could Lord Orion be thinking?_

_Entry 211_

_This is it then._

_I just heard the news, first Cloudsdale was wiped out and then Canterlot was covered by some kind of big pink cloud and now I’m hearing that Fillydelphia and possibly even Manehattan both got hit too._

_Red Heart, if you’re somehow still alive, I never got the chance to say how sorry I am that I acted like such a cunt during the divorce. I just wasn’t ready to be a father._

_I wish I could see you one last time._

_Entry 289_

_A large group of Zebras came by today, Mayor Chips was on the verge of having a heart attack. A soldier, Amandla Darius Tertius, spoke for the group claiming that they had come from the Turtledove Detention Center just south of here. They had been traveling for days and have sick/wounded with them and needed shelter and supplies. Mayor Chips allowed them a single night and allowed me to treat those I could._

_I spoke with the Zebras as I worked, from what I could understand, my understanding of their different dialects is limited, most of them are civilians running away from the Fires of Daybreaker that are still consuming their homeland or their parents had been Equestrian citizens that were accused of treason by the MoM and were imprisoned at the detention center with actual soldiers._

_Darius confided in me that his grandfather, Amandla Primus, had fought in one of the Battles of Stalliongrad and had been saved by the first megaspell._

_Entry 301_

_Mayor Chips died last night, one hundred and thirteen is a rare achievement now. His grandson, Applechips, is going to be named the next mayor… Pink Flu might finally be gone now…._

_Entry 309_

_Still no word of any surviving cities, the Heartland is still far too irradiated to go much further south than the edge of the Applelasia Mountains… have gotten a few sparse radio signals from Stalliongrad but nothing too concrete…_

_Entry 369_

_Why were we spared?_

_Cloudsdale… Canterlot… Manehattan… Fillydelphia… Stalliongrad… Trottingham… Winnieapolis and St Haul…_

_We’re less than a hundred miles from the border, the Zebras attacked the oil and natural gas pumps in the Swamp’s Southern Flatts multiple times during the war, so why didn’t they use a megaspell against us?_

_Why were we spared?_

_Entry 560_

_I’m feeling weaker and weaker by the day now, I wanna believe it’s radiation sickness, but I know that’s bullshit. I’ve tried to write as much helpful information as I could for them to survive in this broken world._

_This is Doctor Fahrenheit, formerly of Cloudsdale, signing off._

As I closed out of the terminal, a pain shot in my chest. I glanced at the skeleton in the bookcase, maybe I should just let the past be the past. I left the room and pulled on my gear, for some reason Light and the brush gun felt more comforting now. I stepped out onto the muddy street and looked around, Tahka and Ophia were dumping Foalbanks corpses into a smoldering fire in front of the church that sputtered black smoke into the early morning sky and digging graves for the dead kids. I stepped into the church and went to the storage room, I moved the crates and to my relief the Foalbanks kids weren’t there and the barred door had been left ajar slightly. I let out a breath, hopeful that they’d find safety. I turned to rejoin the others and found Ophia standing in the doorframe.

“Did you need something?” I asked.

“I knew you’d be weak,” The mare growled as she crossed the room, “Knew that you wouldn’t be able to do what was needed.”

I quickly thought of drawing Light on her, but Umeme would’ve killed me, “Look, killing adults who made the consious choice to murder and rape is one thing, but never ask me to kill a kid, if that makes me weak, then so be it.”

“Do you think the Swampfolk spawn into existence like the demons of ancient fairy tales?” the mare asked in a low voice, grabbing my collar and pushing me back against the wall, “Where do you think Bitterchip came from?”

Honestly I hadn’t considered that, it almost made a disturbing sense, if a predator killed your livestock you would go kill it and its young to stop any future attacks.

Goddesses above, was I really thinking this?

“Did… you kill them?” I asked hesitantly.

The mare shook her head, “Didn’t need to, timberwolves will make short work of them.”

“Are you Kids behaving yourselves?” Mashhad’s voice interrupted, the sniper stood in the doorway along with Umeme, Tahka and the kids.

“This doesn’t concern you, Mashhad,” Ophia bitterly spat.

“Ophia,” Umeme crossed the room and placed a hoof on her shoulder, “Stand down.”

“No!” the mare’s voice cracked slightly and her grip on my collar loosened, “Q’osk would still be alive if he-”

“Ophia,” Umeme calmly insisted, the mare released me and pressed her face into the stallion’s shoulder and started to cry.

The room was silent for a long time, the mare’s weeping was the only sound. I noticed a bumping sound coming from the other side of the wall with the bookcase. I flipped on my E.F.S. and noticed a blip behind it. Pushing the bookcase out of the way and opening the door I peered inside and saw a wall of jail cells, the blip was in the last cell in the corner. I flicked on my flashlight and shined its beam into the cells. My flashlight lit up the bloodied body of a dark gray Unicorn stallion huddled in the corner, he was covered in the same cancerous cysts and glowing tumors that all of the Foalbanks had. He lifted a swollen foreleg nearly three times the normal size, the glowing tumors across his upper body split open and dozens of eyeballs of every color glared at me.

I screamed, jumping backward against the wall, “What the fuck are you?!”

“Ya got water in the brain?” the Foalbanks growled, slamming his body against the cell door, “Shut off the fuckin’ light!”

“Kid?” Mashhad stood in the doorway, “What happ-wait, Argus?”

“Mashhad,” The Foalbanks looked over at the sniper and the group, “Ah should’a figured that ruckus last night was y’all.”

“What’re you doing here?” the sniper asked.

Argus leaned back from the door and looked away, “Ya know why.”

“Where did they take Aunt Kaldi?” Umeme asked.

Argus closed many of his eyes and hung his head, “Sturmkaller.”

“The Regulators?” Ophia muttered as the group slumped at the news.

“Shit!” Umeme shouted, slamming his hoof against the cell door.

“Who’s this Sturmkaller?” I asked, “And who’re the Regulators?”

The group looked up at me for a long time before Mashhad spoke.

“The Regulators control Highway Twenty north of the Swamps from Junction Twenty, they used to be like us keeping the road clear and the trade flowing between Baltimare and the Twin Brothers, Winnieapolis and St Haul.”

“A few months ago though, a Pegasus calling herself _Sturmkaller_ killed the previous leader, everypony who didn’t agree with her and turned the rest into slavers,” Umeme continued, “We have an agreement with her to live and let live, she doesn’t disturb us, we don’t disturb her.”

“No way we’re getting Kaldi now,” Tahka muttered.

“What about me?” I asked, the group looked up at me again, “Well, you all can’t go to this Sturmkaller, but I’m not an Outcast, I could go in, find Kaldi and get her out.”

The group looked amongst themselves for a long while before Umeme stood and placed a hoof on my shoulder, “I cannot possibly thank you enough for this, Iron Slug.”

“Just keep your end of our bargain.”

  
**Level Up:** Trait Acquired: Wild Wasteland: Maybe you’re suffering from a blow to the head or the Wasteland’s starting to get to you… I’m sure it’s nothing… too worrying… for now.


	6. The Regulators

**Chapter Five: The Regulators**

_ “That kinda thing is just bad for business… bad all the way ‘round.” _

We made our way to the Long Stretch, Umeme and Tahka pulling the wagon carrying Q’osk’s corpse, the kids and Argus. Ophia, Mashhad and I flanked the wagon, before we left, I had looked over the Foalbanks’ guns on the racks, having picked out the cream of the crop, I was now carrying two duffle bags over my shoulders, five lever rifles and six shotguns, a dozen revolvers of 357 Magnum, 38 Special, 44 Special and Magnum, 45 Long, 45-70 Gov’t and a couple of hunting rifles that were cut down to a pair of semiautomatic pistols that still used .223 and 5.56mm rounds, my PipBuck labeled the strange weapons as  _.223 Pistols _ .

Argus carried one in a holster under his foreleg with a few spare ten round magazines. I learned that the stallion wasn’t actually a Foalbanks, at least not in the way that Jackchips and Bitterchips had been, apparently he was from a long dead family further south near the Swamp’s Core and he was foal-napped by the Foalbanks when he was a colt. He was then taken as a ward by the Outcasts when they captured a massive chunk of Foalbanks Land the following year and he met Kaldi and the two married years later and had Prysm over a decade or so ago. Argus was silent as we reached the crumbling road and started down to Clearview. The hours rolled by slowly as we crossed the swampland and it was close to what I assumed was noon when we reached Clearview and were greeted by the townsfolk and a group of a hundred Outcast soldiers, a decorated soldier stepped up to Umeme.

“Legate Amandla, the General sent us to assist you and your group, but it seems as though you have already taken care of everything, again.”

“It seems so, Legate Eadayiy,” Umeme returned with similar coldness, “Of course you’re used to coming late, aren’t you?”

A few of his soldiers snickered and the Legate briskly ordered those soldiers to take over pulling the wagon for Umeme and Tahka before we continued on to the Castle. It was late in the afternoon when we reached the Castle, a group came out to greet us and cheer or return but the fanfare halted almost immediately when they saw the wagon. Saluem pushed her way through the crowd and checked on each of us before reaching me.

“What happened?”

“Q’osk is-is dead,” I mumbled, staring at the ground, “t-they had a missile launcher-”

“It’s not your fault,” the mare quietly reassued me, placing a hoof on my shoulder and pulled me into a firm hug, I slowly returned it and my heart felt a little better.

“Let me through! Let me through!” a voice shouted as Q’ale pushed her way through the crowd, but she stopped in her tracks upon seeing the wagon.

Umeme tried to speak with her but she pushed past him and stared at her father’s corpse, she placed her hoof on the sheet and she started to cry. A shorter Zebra stallion came to her side and wrapped his foreleg over her shoulders, the mare broke down into sobs as she was taken away. 

“Daddy!” Prysm shouted as she ran through the crowd and jumped into Argus’ arms.

“Sugar Cube!” the stallion shouted as he held the filly tightly.

The crowd parted and the General and a few of his guards stepped up, he looked over the wagon, the kids then us before stopping on his son. Umeme stood there staring up at the armored giant stoically.

“Your room, now,” the General growled through his gasmask, Umeme stoically stepped into the crowd and entered the Castle.

“Lucius,” Saluem started, but the General held up an armored hoof to stop her.

“Inside now.”

We all stood in the General’s court room, the General listened as we explained what happened, about how Umeme changed the plans, how I insisted on saving the kids, how we cleared the town, Jackchip’s and Q’osk’s deaths and finding Argus. Saluem stood beside him and her ears perked up when Ophia declared that I couldn’t kill the Foalbanks kids.

The General wasn’t happy, “Where is she then?”

“Sturmkaller,” Argus answered, the room murmured quietly, “Uncle Jack had Junsteps take her up to the Regulators to sell for better firepower.”

“You’re certain?” The General stared down at his brother-in-law, “Then what do you plan?”

“You know damn well, Lucius,” the Swampfolk muttered.

“Argus, think about this,” the General warned, “Prysm just got you back after nearly four years.”

“And now Ah’m gittin’ Kaldi back, even if Ah gotta pluck the wings off that cunt.”

Well, at least I knew where Prysm got her vocabulary from.

The General called my attention, “Yes, Sir?”

“Iron Slug, tomorrow you will assist Umeme and Argus, you have three days.”

Just hold up your end of the bargain, I thought, “Of course, General.”

The General turned to one of his guards and ordered him to bring Umeme, Saluem tried to argue with him but he shot her down. After a few minutes Umeme came into the room, a couple of guards restrained his forelegs and a third stripped him of his clothes.

“Umeme, my Legate, my son,” the General started, Umeme stood there stoically, “You may have distablized the Foalbanks for the foreseeable future and recovered your mother’s pelt, but in doing so, Q’osk was killed in the following onslaught, what do you say in your defence?”

Umeme looked up into his father’s eyes and asked, “Is it any different than what you did?”

Every Outcast in the room went stone cold as General stepped forward inches from Umeme’s face, “I did not get my squad killed when we purged Drop High’s town.”

The General leaned back and grabbed his spear from a guard, the point sparked with electricity as the armored giant slammed the point into Umeme’s chest. A swarming cloud of yellow and white sparks slammed into the stallion, burning his coat and filling the room with a sickening smell of burnt hair and flesh. Umeme didn’t scream or grunt in pain at first, but soon it was too much for him to bear and he let out the most blood chilling cry filled with so much pain and anguish I still haven’t heard anything like it to this day. The General only stopped and pulled back his weapon when he had curved a runic symbol over Umeme’s heart that vaguely resembled an eagle carrying a skull.

“Rise, Speculatores,” the General rumbled with a low voice, there was a collective gasp as Umeme slowly got to his hooves, “You have three days.”

“Yes, my General,” Umeme struggled to say before he turned and left the room followed closely by Ophia and Saluem.

I sold all of the guns and ammunition I didn’t need to some merchants and they gave me just under a couple thousand caps for them. I was left with Light, my 357 Magnum revolver, the brush gun and the .223 pistol with enough ammunition for all. Arhem had stitched up my suit and reinforced the hoofball pads of my barding with shoulder pauldrons and foreleg guards made of shaped blued and blackened metal to match with my suit. He assured me that it would offer better protection from intermediate caliber firearms, shrapnel and blunt force trauma compared to just my barding and my suit. I paid him for his work, around a hundred caps. I continued aimlessly walking around the Castle, many Outcasts congratulated me for killing Jackchips, a few offered to buy me a drink, but I declined. I thought about what I was gonna do after getting Kaldi back, what if the General didn’t give me the information and demanded I join his forces? What if his information didn’t help me? What could I do with it anyways? I couldn’t just wander around the Wastes praying to stumble upon Mom, could I? Or maybe I should join the Outcasts and settle down here?

I didn’t know.

“Hello there, Handsome,” a voice caught my attention, I had been so absorbed by my thoughts I didn’t notice that I was standing in front of a large wooden hut labeled as  _ Bathhouse _ with a mare dressed in scanty clothing that accented her curves.

“Hello there,” the mare in scant clothing beckoned me, “A handsome buck like you has some nerve being lonely tonight.”

“What… ah do you mean?” I asked, blushing slightly and looking away.

“How cute,” the mare giggled, “Just five Denarues or twenty caps and I’ll make you forget all your troubles for the night.”

I blushed a little more as I realized what she was implying.

“Livian,” Saluem muttered dryly.

“Oh, good evening, Saluem,” the mare-of-the-evening greeted Saluem with equal dryness in her voice, “I don’t usually see you over here.”

“Only when I need to treat your… customers,” turning her gaze to me she whispered, “My brother wants to speak with you.”

“I’m quite certain our illustrious leader could see him in the morning before he goes and saves that mud dancing sister of yours,” Livian interrupted, holding onto my foreleg.

“It involves the information you wanted,” Saluem whispered into my ear, more insistly.

“I’m very sorry, uh Ms Livian, but I’ll have to decline your… generous services for tonight.”

Livian acted like she was disappointed, but she released my foreleg, “Oh alright, but don’t be a stranger, Mr Stable Dweller.”

“Thank you,” I muttered to Saluem when we were out of earshot.

“She’s a real piece of work,” the mare whispered, “Two of her kids play with Prysm and now she has Yellow Pox.”

I resisted the sudden urge to vomit at that news, note to self, avoid more mares-of-the-evening in the future. We stopped at her hut and she ushered me inside.

“I take it you lied about the General, huh?” I asked, turning back to the healer.

“Pretty obvious, huh,” she half chuckled, “Your armor looks better now, almost proper.”

I thanked her and we stood there in awkward silence before a thought dawned on me.

“How’s Umeme doing?” I asked, “And the kids?”

“He’ll carry that mark for the rest of his life, but he will survive, I’ve sealed it so infection is unlikely. Those kids however will require time to heal mentally, they might even suffer for the rest of their lives, but we will take care of them.”

“Oh right, I almost forgot,” I said, digging through my saddlebag and pulling out the books.

Saluem stared down at them in awe, “Iron, how did you-”

I shrugged, “Found some bookcases full of them in Dela Crow, these were in the best conditions.”

The mare looked over the covers with reverence as she carefully opened  _ The Canterlot Journal of Health _ to the cover page,

“To my beloved Fahrenheit,

Do you remember when you asked me on our first date so many years ago? That was when I knew we were destined for each other. Even though our love may have soured over the War, I still think back on those days with fondness.

I hope to see you one last time,

Your Red Heart.”

She flipped to another page, “There’s hundreds of notes in the margins, this doctor was incredibly methodical.”

“There’s also this book,” I said, pulling out the  _ Wasteland Survival Guide _ , “I haven’t checked yet.”

“Ditzy Doo,” Saluem gasped, taking the book from me, “My great granduncle told me stories about how he guided a mare named Ditzy Doo around the Horseshoe Bay writing a survival guide for the Wasteland, I always thought he was joking though.”

She looked over the book for a moment, “I wonder if she’s still alive?”

“You can have them,” I explained, “I figured you’d make the best use of them, also as payment for saving my life.”

“Thank you, Iron Slug,” Saluem placed a hoof on my foreleg, “You have no idea how helpful these will be.”

We sat in silence again for a while before Saluem closed the books and stood.

“I wanted to thank you for all you’ve done,” she explained in a low voice as she sauntered over to her chest, riffled through it for a moment and pulled out a bottle of dark red wine and two glasses, “I’ve been saving this for a special day.”

We sat and drank the wine for a while, we read the books for a while before setting them aside and laughed and shared stories of our childhoods, I learned that she was the youngest of her three siblings, her brother was the oldest and Kaldi was almost ten years her senior, making her only seven years older than me and she had learned most of her medical knowledge from traveling Wasteland doctors, the most helpful if not the most pompous and arrogant of which came from a place up in the Twin Brothers called City Seventeen. I told her how I was the last student in my class to get my cutie mark, because who in their right mind would give a colt a gun? She laughed at that and playfully pushed on my shoulder. As the evening went on and the bottle emptied, her jokes became more and more intimate until she was almost hanging on me.

“This was pretty nice,” I whispered, putting my empty glass aside, “But I think I should go get some sleep for tomorrow.”

“You could… you know stay here,” she whispered, leaning closer, “If you like.”

I looked up at her, her cheeks were bright red and she was swaying slightly. She leaned back and let her coat and shirt pool on the floor behind her and she leaned closer to me. I’m sure my face was bright red and steam could’ve been hissing from my ears.

“Uh you don’t have to do that,” I stammered, scooting back, “I mean I’m just doing this to find my Mom.”

“No,” the mare said flatly, placing a hoof on my chest, “I know what you really are, Iron, you didn’t have to save those kids from Dela Crow, but you did, you could’ve killed those Foalbanks kids and I wouldn’t have known, but you spared them.”

I scooted back further till I was pressed against the wall.

“I think I know exactly what you are, Iron,” she slurred, leaning closer and closer till just a few inches separated us, I felt her hot drunken breath on my face and my heart thumped in my ears, “You’re a good stallion.”

I half chuckled nervously.

“I’ve only had a couple of lovers,” she sheepishly slurred, placing a hoof on my chest, “Have you…?”

“Really Saluem,” I tried to say, “You don’t have to do this.”

“No,” Saluem slurred, shaking her head, “I wanted to show you how much I appreciate what you did.”

Before I could say anything, she firmly pressed her lips against mine. Her lips were so soft and I couldn’t resist but return her affections. She pulled back to catch our breath and a thin trail of saliva hung between us.

“You’re not a bad kisser,” she grinned, “A bit inexperienced, but not too bad.”

I blushed at her words, but I had a pange of guilt remembering Cobalt, “Saluem, I don’t think we should do this.”

She ignored me though as she unzipped my barding’s jacket and stripped off my armor before grabbing my suit’s zipper in her teeth and pulling it down past my crotch, my cock and balls sprang free from the restrictive blue leather and slapped her face almost comically.

“Well well well,” she mused, looking at my appendage, “No wonder you were so embarrassed, it’s far bigger than my previous buckfriends.”

“Saluem, I really think we should stop,” I tried to say.

But the mare ignored me again as her tongue gently licked my cock, I shivered as she licked and kissed and sucked my balls experimentally before she dragged her tongue up to the head. I grunted and squirmed as she engulfed my cock into her mouth and down her throat. I very nearly came there and then, Cobalt had never done anything like this before. I held back as much as I could, but it was a lost cause, I groaned as I came down Saluem’s throat. The mare gagged but held on, a small amount of jizz seeped out of her nostrils, she let my cock slip out, spat into a wash rag and coughed into her elbow.

“Sorry,” I murmured, “I should’ve-”

“No, I’m sorry, didn’t realize I was that good,” she grinned, moving up and straddling my hips.

“I don’t think we should do this,” I tried to stop her.

“Are you sure?” she asked, looking down at me, rubbing her crotch against my hardening cock, “Do you have a girl back in your Stable?”

I faltered slightly, “Not… anymore.”

“Then why stop?” she whispered, leaning forward and kissing my lips, “We’re both adults, I think you're good looking, we’re just having some fun, what’s wrong with that?”

My blush deepened as I blurted out, “You might get pregnant.”

The mare stared down at me for a while before she whispered, “Does that frighten you, Iron?”

I looked up at her confused as she continued, “I mean, I’m not planning on having a child anytime soon, but my mother’s tribe considered any child to be a blessing.”

I stared at the mare like she’d lost her damned mind, we’d only known each other for a couple of days now, one of those days I was mostly unconscious. Having some fun for a night was one thing, but did she just tell me that she wouldn’t be too upset if she got pregnant?

What?

“Besides,” she continued, rubbing her crotch enticingly on my cock’s head, I felt the heat and wetness from her core, “I have contraceptives I can take if you don’t want to be a father yet.”

With that, she leaned back and my cock slid halfway into her wet velvety embrace. I wanna say that it was the best experience in my life, which I mean isn’t wrong, whenever Cobalt and I had sex it was too quick to really be enjoyable, she also was incredibly sensitive and would climax and fall asleep long before I had the chance to. Saluem by sheer contrast was definitely more experienced, she was far more gentle and would kiss my chest and neck and whispered pointers to me about what she liked too, there was a small spot below her earlobe that made her to stifle a moan. I can’t say how long we fucked, maybe it was for a few minutes, maybe it was an hour, it definitely wasn’t till the crack of dawn, but by the end, Saluem held me close as I spurted a few globs of my seed onto her belly. She grabbed a clean wash rag and wiped me and herself off, she then slid into the bedroll with me and we drifted off to sleep in each others’ arms. As we fell asleep, I couldn’t help but have a pestering nagging feeling at the back of my fleeting mind, I knew this could have consequences.

I opened my eyes and looked around, I wasn’t in Saluem’s hut anymore, I was in a large office. Bookcases full of books nearly reached the high ceiling, the light colored wood paneled walls were decorated framed photographs, schematics and awards. A large logo of a sword and a shooting star hung on the wall above a pair of double pale wooden doors,

_ Orion Group Inc. _

_ Orion Solutions of Baltimare, KBR International of Vanhoover, St Auburn Medical of Chicoltgo, Agricola Foods of Winnieapolis, Bale Industrial of Trottingham, Jackpot LLC of Foaledo, Apricot Computers of Seaddle and Shining Jade’s Gemstones of Monacolt. _

A large carpet of what looked like a star chart covered the dark wooden floor and a small desk of dark wood was pushed up near a thick glass window showing a sprawling cityscape on the shores of a massive bay of dark gray water. I turned away from the window and looked down at a newspaper wrapped in a glow of pink magic,

_ Baltimare Times _

_ Outcry in the Swamps _

_ Citizens of the Horseshoe Bay protest the construction of Hippocampus oil and natural gas drilling operations in the Hayseed Swamps, one protestor had the absolute gaul to say…  _

The story dominated the front page, pushing aside other stories like  _ Release of Midnight Serenade’s tribute to the Old Guard delayed due to Pink Flu and food poisoning _ and  _ Mayor Rumble to release the tribute to Flash Magnus and the Old Guard for Millennial Celebrations…  _ and  _ The new Thunderhead class Cloudships, The Skydbladnir, Song of the North and In Amber Clad have all been released from the Drydocks of Trottingham with more on the way…  _

I dropped the newspaper on the desk and looked at a framed photograph of an all black Pegasus mare wearing a multicolored sundress standing in front of a beach of clean sand with some writing,  _ Horsolulu, Gallopinghost Islands _ . I smiled warmly at the Pegasus and tapped my hoof against the glass.

“Doctor Orion?” a voice asked through an intercom on the desk, “Doctor Orion, Sergeant Cake is here for your eight o’clock.”

I placed the photograph back and pressed a button on the intercom, “Thank you, Crystal, send them in.”

The doors opened and a Unicorn mare dressed in a cleaned military uniform, “Um, Doctor Orion?”

“Yes, hello Sergeant Cake, thank you for seeing me so soon,” I said, waving the mare over to a seat across from me, “Now I’m quite certain you must have questions.”

“Yes, Doctor,” the soldier said, brushing some of her bushy carrot orange mane, she tucked a black flat cap hat into one of her coat’s pockets, “I was hoping to see my brother, Lieutenant Pound Cake, but I can’t get a straight answer from my superiors.”

“Yes,” I started, getting up from my chair and stepping around the desk, “Your brother seems to have suffered multiple severe injuries, lacerations to his lungs, fractures in his radius and ulna bones in his wings, not to mention possible damage to his thoracic column, it truly is a miracle at all that he’s still breathing. We have him stabilized in an Auto Doc right now, but if we don’t do something soon, he may as well be braindead.”

The Sergeant almost cried but managed to just hold them back.

“Sergeant Cake,” I took the soldier’s hooves in mine, “I know what it’s like to lose loved ones, but I promise you that my doctors and scientists are trying everything in their power to save your brother.”

She nodded and wiped away a tear.

“There is another option,” I said, standing up and turning to the intercom on the desk, “Doctor Windsly, can you come in?”

The doors opened and a middle aged Pegasus stallion stepped in, “Hello, Sergeant Cake, how are you this fine day?”

“I’ve been better.”

“My head of Research and Development, Doctor Windsly here, has been working closely with both of the Ministries of Technology and Arcane Sciences respectively to improve on power armor manufacturing in Trottingham, so far he has managed to increase production by over sixty percient in the last five months alone. Windsly, if you will tell the Sergeant here what you told me the other day.”

“Yes,” the doctor said, pushing up his glasses, “I’ve reviewed Lt Cake’s condition and I believe we have a possible solution, my team and I have developed a variant of power armor that combines the strength of the standard Mark One models with the flexibility of the Mark Twos, we are calling it Mark Three Experiemental, alpha testing has shown an increase of immeasurable proportions in controlled environments, but we have yet to properly test the armor in the field, however with your brother’s unfortunate but timely condition and his prior training with Mark Two power armor, we just might be able to make progress on the project once more.”

“Sergeant Cake, this procedure could save not just your brother but also potentially hundreds of thousands of lives, as his last living relative, the choice is yours to make.”

The soldier looked between Doctor Windsly and I before she made her choice, “Alright, if it will save Pound.”

I felt something pushing against me, opening my eyes, I saw Umeme standing above me. I glanced over and noticed Saluem was sound asleep snoring quietly.

Quickly remembering what happened last night, I sat up, “Uh, yeah this is exactly what it looks like.”

The stallion didn’t say anything, instead he turned and left the hut. Saluem muttered something as she turned over in her sleep. I quietly pulled on my suit and gear and looked down at the mare I’d just had a night of peace with for a moment longer. What will Mom think? Cobalt would probably be screaming at me and refuse to speak with me for a long time.

I steeled my thoughts before stepping to the door.

“Heading out already?” she asked sleepily, I turned to her, she was sitting up on her elbow.

“Yeah, Umeme knows,” I muttered, stepping back and sitting at her side.

“The amount of times I’ve caught him with Ophia, he won’t tell Lucius,” She brushed it aside.

“Right, well… last night was fun… so long,” I turned to leave again, but she stopped me.

“Be safe and protect him, ok?” she whispered.

I took her hooves in mine and kissed her lips, “I promise.”

She returned the kiss and pressed her forehead to mine, careful of my horn, we stayed like that for a few moments before I stepped out the door.

“You ready?” Umeme asked, he was wearing his gear, but now his cloak had a few more bullet holes in it.

Argus was standing by the gate sharpening a several inch long hunting knife with a jawbone handle. He was wearing a black jacket made of heavy canvas with blackened metal shoulder and foreleg armor, one of the invisibility cloaks over his shoulders, a saddlebag and the .223 pistol in a holster on his foreleg. He had also bathed, his dark gray coat and balding mane were now an ashen blond and a swampy gray green and I noticed his cutie mark was an eye with black feathered wings.

“Where’re the others?”

“Not coming,” Umeme muttered, not meeting my eyes, “This is a redemption mission, my squad isn’t allowed to come.”

“You’re supposed to do this alone?” I asked in slight disbelief, “That’s suicide.”

“I disobeyed a direct order from my General, the fact that he is also my father is circumstantial.”

“That’s barbaric,” I interrupted.

“I succeed in my mission or I die trying,” he continued flatly, “Either way I’m forgiven and given full honors once more. That is the way of the Pompae.”

“The Pompae?”

“My mother’s tribe, they branded the other twelve together and forged the Empire after the First Caesar abandoned us after the Discord.”

“Well,” I changed the subject, “Why’re we allowed to come then?”

Argus sheathed his knife, “Not even the Goddesses could keep me from muh wife, Drylander.”

“And you still desire your mother’s whereabouts, no?” Umeme asked.

With that, we left the Castle and journeyed north along a path through the Swamps just as sunlight pierced the distant horizon and disappeared above the clouds. We spent the better part of the day making our way through trees and marshes, we encountered a few overgrown pale mosquitoes nearly as big as me. Umeme called them Bloodbugs, they were unnervingly quick and it took a whole magazine to kill two of them even with S.A.T.S. Umeme’s targeted shots took out three in a single shot and Argus whipped out his pistol and killed three of them with practiced ease and pulled out his knife and stabbed the fourth just behind its head.

“Where are we going?” I asked Argus.

“There’s only one way t’ git t’ the Regulators wit’out ‘em knowin’, the Onions run barges up t’ the Twin Brothers and even Foaledo under the Regulators’ noses, since they live in Outcast Territory the Regulators can’t hit ‘em, as per the treaty.”

It was in the afternoon when we reached a high old brick wall decorated with plastic doll heads, teddy bears, painted white onions and a rampant Zebra outlined by a blazing sun. At least there weren’t any corpses. Past the fence was a courtyard with a few stilted ramshackle shacks surrounding a very large old mansion on the banks of the same wide river I had spotted on my map when I had left Stable Fifty-Two. My PipBuck pinged, my map had labeled the place as the Onion Farmstead, I was about to give up trying to figure out this damned thing. A number of Swampfolk kids were running around the courtyard playing little games or doing chores like looking after some penned in livestock, a two headed cow and a couple of lumpy pigs and scaly chickens, at least I think they were chickens, they could be strange looking lizards for all I knew.

A filly sat on a rusty sheet metal roof holding a lever rifle, when she spotted us she jumped up and started hollering, “Who y’all?!”

“I am Amandla Orthius Umeme Octavius, we are here for Cattail Onion.”

“Grandpa ain’t here Outcast, so fuck off!” the filly shouted, brandishing her rifle, “Momma already paid this season!”

“I’m here for something else, child,” Umeme shouted, “Junebug Onion, get out here now!”

After a few moments a slightly pregnant mare wearing a black denim jacket over a blue checkered dress stepped out from the manson and came up to the gate, she was followed by two younger mares in similar clothing, I instantly noticed that their bodies were considerably less mutated than the Foalbanks of Dela Crow, the lumps under their hides were barely noticeable, the couple of tumors and pustules were speratict and they looked overall much healthier.

“Well howdy there, Mista Umeme,” the older mare greeted Umeme, “Ain’t seen ya in a dog’s life, how ya been?”

“I’m here on business, Junebug, is your grandfather here?”

Junebug looked away slightly bored, “Oh, Daddy mighta gone on down t’ the McZaffords and the Black Apples a spell back, Ah don’t rightly know when he’ll be back, if ya gots some time…”

I noticed that Umeme’s cheeks reddened slightly, I also noticed that all of the kids were different in little tiny ways, either their colors mismatched or they were different races, mostly Earth ponies or Unicorns but there were a few Pegasi and even a couple of half Zebras like Prysm. A colt and filly were playing with a few puppies almost like they could control them, somehow. I glanced up at one of the younger Unicorn mares by Junebug, she was wearing a faded black denim jacket with the sloppy symbol of an onion stitched into her sleeve over a grassy green dress and her shaggy muddy mane covered one of her dark brown eyes with a couple of small black rings in her brow. I suspected that she had noticed what I had suspected, because she nodded.

“Junebug, I’m on a tight schedule, now go tell your father I need to speak with him.”

“Touchy today, muh offer still stands,” Junebug giggled playfully as she went over to a shack closest to the river.

The mare who nodded at me lingered a bit, staring at my suit collar and then down at my PipBuck, her cheeks reddened when she noticed her sisters had left and she quickly hurried up to the mansion. Umeme reached over the fence and opened the gate so we could enter.

We crossed the courtyard and entered the mansion, the entrance room was big with a large faded rug in the center and a few chairs and sofas for sitting. A narrow staircase led up to a second floor with lots of doors, the whole place was decorated with old photographs and drawings and a few animal pelts and heads, though there weren’t any pony or Zebra hides this time. So that was a better sign at least. A number of kids ran in from outside, past me and rounded a corner into a long corridor with more doors. Umeme and Argus both sat down on the chairs and I picked the sofa, we waited there for quite some time, the family moved around us like we weren’t there. I was about to ask Umeme and Argus who we were waiting for when a mousy voice squeaked out something. I looked over my shoulder and found the mare who had nodded at me, she was holding a platter in a small cloud of swampy brown magic with some drinks on it.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

The mare’s cheeks burned red and she squeaked again, “Wouldja like a drink, Mista?”

“Um, thank you?” I said, wrapping a bottle of dark brown liquid,  _ Sunrise Sarsaparilla _ and taking a sip, I can’t really describe what it tasted like beyond its aftertaste was of wintergreen, vanilla and maybe licorice. I liked it.

The mare handed out the other two drinks to Umeme and Argus, she stepped to the side and offered a quiet hidden smile to me.

“Jubee, leave the Drylander alone an’ help Carrot wit’ the pigs!” an elderly Earth pony mare shouted from a side room.

“Yes, Grandma,” the mare squeaked out and hurried to the door, but then she stole one quick glance at me before stepping outside.

“Ya best forgit ‘bout her, Drylander!” the elderly mare shouted, brandishing a cleaver at me, “Jubee ain’t of no use t’ nopony!”

We sat there in silence again till it started getting dark, then Junebug came inside followed by the younger mares and Jubee.

“Ah’m sorry Mista Umeme, but it looks like muh Grandpa ain’t gonna show up t’night and y’all might be havin’ t’ stay cause of the storm blowin’ in,” Junebug almost sauntered up to the Zebra stallion, “Muh bed is still pretty big.”

“Ya be knocking that off, Junebug,” the elderly mare shouted from an upstairs room this time, “They’s be sleepin’ out inta barn, t’night!”

“But Grandma,” Junebug cried like a spoiled brat.

“No butts, Missie,” the mare shouted, brandishing a hairbrush at Junebug, “Ah’s still ain’t forgiven ya whorin’ ass for fuckin’ that Beastlord buck an’ gittin’ ya’self preg’inant again! When Ah’s was ya’s age, Ah only slept with twenty bucks before Ah met ya Grandpa!”

“When ya’s was muh age the War was still goin’ on, ya dried out old bat,” Junebug muttered quietly to herself, the elderly mare chucked the hairbrush and smacked the back of Junebug’s head.

“Git goin’, Missie!” the elderly mare shouted as Junebug and her sisters followed her up the stairs and down a corridor.

“Thank you, Mrs Onion,” Umeme addressed the elderly mare, “We won’t be a burden to you or your family.”

“Eh, git goin’,” the mare replied gruffly, turning back to the upstairs room, “Fuckin’ dumb Outcasts.”

“Well, they’re a particularly loving family, aren’t they?” I sarcastically asked to nopony in particular as we crossed the courtyard to the larger of the shacks that leaned at a slight angle.

Umeme and I pushed on the double doors and the most horrific, putrid, foul smelling, toxic disgustingness that I had ever smelled in my short life wafted out from the damp darkness, I nearly vomited.

The barn was dark and damp with wet hay, straw and feces blanketing the floor, the two headed cow and the lumpy pigs rested in stalls deeper in. A single lantern with a flickering flame was the only light in the building, casting shadows on the walls. Umeme grabbed the lantern and Argus dragged up a few crates, we sat down around the light. Umeme picked up a few bundles of dryer straw and lit them on fire making torches. I took one in my magic, slowly I gradually felt warmer. Suddenly, the clouds above started leaking as the storm hit.

It was like being back in the showers of Stable Fifty-Two, but it was everywhere outside and it wouldn’t stop. A number of cold water drops leaked through the roof, splashing us occasionally. Argus stepped outside into the rain and returned after twenty minutes with a fat three eyed fish with a big gaping mouth that he called a Big Mouth Bass. He fried it up with some of his rum and honestly it tasted pretty good. We were in the barn for hours, but the storm didn’t let up 

“So, what do we do now?” I asked, hugging my barding closer to me and the fire, my breath fogged in the cold air. 

‘Why was it getting so fucking cold?’ I thought, wishing I was back with Saluem in her bedroll.

“We go to the Regulators and save Kaldi,” Argus grumbled, checking on the livestock.

“And after that?” I asked, Umeme was looking out the crack in the doors letting cold but fresh air in.

Neither stallion answered, I pulled up my PipBuck’s radio, I didn’t want to click on Red Eye’s Broadcast again, that one time was far more than enough, so I picked a different signal.

_ “Chills _

_ Chills come racing down my spine _

_ Like a storm on my skin _

_ With shaking hooves _

_ I’ll guide your SWEET soul into mine _

_ Until I feel you within _

_ And I know _

_ I know that it’s all about understanding _

_ And I’m hidden inside _

_ Your beautiful soul as it’s crying for love _

_ To conquer the day slowly dawnin’ _

_ I want you to know _

_ You’re the heart of my Temple of Thought.” _

The voice and the song he sang was filled with sorrowful hopefulness that it made me go to unhappy places, I almost had to force myself not to cry.

_ “So when you’re restless I will calm the ocean for you _

_ In your sorrow I will dry your tears _

_ When you need me I will be the love beside you _

_ I’ll take away all of your fears _

_ Oh, I’ll take AWAY all of your fears _

_ So you can let go all your fears _

_ And you stay _

_ Stay with me when I break down _

_ Like a dream come saving I’ve _

_ Words shall fail here _

_ I’ll just read the way you sound _

_ Till I know the meaning of love and life _

_ And it could be I’m understating _

_ What are your needs that you stand in behind _

_ Every words you say to make my day slowly dawnin’ _

_ I want you to know _

_ You’re the heart of my Temple of Thought _

_ So when you’re restless I will calm the ocean for you _

_ In your sorrow I will dry your tears _

_ When you need me I will be the love beside you _

_ I’ll take away all of your fears _

_ Oh, I’ll take AWAY all of your fears _

_ So you can let go all your fears _

_ Dreams have nothing on my reality I _

_ I’m the scent of your skin _

_ I know we’re riding endlessly into the sun _

_ Feel the life deep within _

_ So when you’re restless I will calm the oceans for you _

_ In your sorrow I will dry your tears _

_ When you need me I will be the love beside you _

_ I’ll take away all your fears _

_ I’ll take AWAY all of your fears _

_ I’ll take away all your fears _

_ I’ll take away all of your fears _

_ You can let go of all your fears.” _

The voice slowly died away and was replaced with a new voice, “This is DJ Pon3 and that was Autumn Poet, singing about one of life’s greatest virtues, being there for that somepony special. And now time for the news for my listeners up in Horseshoe Bay. My sources tell me that the Legion of Outcasts have wiped out the leader of a group of cannibalistic raiders in the Hayseed Swamps called the Foalbanks.”

My ears perked up, Umeme continued staring out the doors, “Though their General denied my source the chance of an interview, I have been told that a Stable Dweller called Iron Slug, was involved in the operation in some way. Hey, Kid, if you’re ever in Manehattan stop by Tenpony Tower, I’m certain Chief Grim Star might have some contracts to fulfill. In other news for the Great Empty…”

I hadn’t heard the rest, my mind was running a mile a minute and my heart started pounding a little faster in my chest. I’d been outside less than a week now, how did this FUCKIN’ DJ know about me all the way in FUCKIN’ Manehattan? And did he really just say my name for the whole of the Wasteland to hear? FUCK! Fuck me with Celestia’s hooves, all of them!

“...lost in transit between the settlements of Buckster and Wharf. Now for the weather, brace yourselves children, cause Winter is coming for your booties! Remember to dress warmly and stay indoors as much as possible. And now back to the music, it’s Bluejay Bond and he’s singing about the  _ Stars of the Midnight Range _ .”

I shut off the radio and put my face in my hooves, Argus was almost cackling. What was I gonna do?

After a long time Umeme called my attention, I stood and looked out the doors, in the slightly heavier cold rain I thought I noticed the briefest of ghostly shimmers on top of the fence. Umeme noticed them too.

“Uncle,” Umeme whispered, Argus was already behind us, .223 pistol and knife at the ready.

I heard a rustling and turned back into the barn and held up my torch, at the back wall I thought I saw the faintest of outlines on the edge of my indirect vision, I switched on my E.F.S. and a yellow blip popped up in front of me on my compass.

“Who’re you?” I asked, the figure pulled back the hood of an invisibility cloak and an Outcast soldier from Clearview materialized, his silenced rifle was at the ready and pointed at Umeme.

“I’m sorry, Legate Umeme,” the Outcast muttered, “It’s for the good of the Outcasts.”

“I’m sorry too, Prime Axius,” Umeme muttered, whipping around Umeme chucked his knife across the barn and hit the soldier between his eyes.

Argus picked up the soldier’s rifle and ammo and set himself up by the back window, “More are comin’.”

Umeme pointed me to the back corner, he retrieved his knife, and closed the soldier’s eyes, “Walk the Fields of Gold, Axius.”

“Did you know him?”

“I trained him, his parents had been raped and eaten by a family in the Southern Flatts, come on.”

Argus planted a small bag of black powder on the soldier as we left and led the livestock into the rain, we crept along the brick wall and waited about twenty feet away. After a few minutes, gunshots popped and banged and lit up the empty barn.

Suddenly the whole courtyard lit up.

A couple dozen muzzle flashes lit up the barn, turning it into splintered cheese, when everything was done, the barn collapsed in on itself with a subdued cloud of dust. The mansion’s windows lit up and a ruckus was drummed up as the Onions learned of the attack, a dozen of the older stallions and mares ran out the front door brandishing lever guns and started attacking the Outcasts Betrayers. I unholstered my brush gun and took aim at the soldiers, my first couple of S.A.T.S. aided shots picked off two soldiers closest to the barn. Argus and Umeme jumped up into the fray, Umeme and Junebug targeted a few soldiers by the brick wall while Argus and a couple Onions shot up a few soldiers trying to flank us. I targeted another few soldiers, a couple of bullets ripped past my head and one struck against my metal pauldron, I dove back behind cover and checked over myself, but aside from a heavy bruise in my shoulder I was fine. Suddenly a soldier came from around a corner and jumped on my back. I tried to get her off, I slammed her against the brick wall, against a tree, I even threw myself back into the mud. I can’t remember how long we tussled, but she managed to get on top of me with her rifle. Before I could lift my brush gun or Light, her neck exploded and she collapsed to the side of me, twitching and gurgling slightly, I stared down at her for a moment before a second soldier materialized in the rain.

“Tahka?” I sputtered, wiping my mane out of my eyes.

The stallion grinned, lowering his smoking rifle, Mashhad materialized alongside Q’osk’s daughter, Q’ale wearing a heavily modified version of Q’osk’s armor with only one of his machine guns on the battle saddle. Mashhad helped me stand up.

“What’re you all doing here?” I asked.

“Helping you recover Kaldi, Kid,” Mashhad answered grinning, “Umeme just happens to be doing the same thing.”

I looked them over and grinned, “Well I appreciate it.”

We got into the battle, Tahka taking to defending the fence, Mashhad took up a perch by the mansion and Q’ale lit up a group of Betrayers with her machine guns. Umeme was tackled by a soldier and Ophia materialized and bucked the soldier’s helmet in and helping Umeme up, the stallion hugged the mare tightly. I wiped my mane out of my eyes and saw a soldier who was trying to rip a mare’s clothes off, I took aim at the soldier and shot him in his neck, he collapsed beside the mare. I got up and quickly crossed the courtyard and checked on the mare, to my surprise it was Jubee, she was picking up a worn looking 44 Magnum revolver in her magic.

“Are you alright?” I asked, helping her out of the mud and taking cover behind the deck, she swept some of the bloody mud out of her mane with her magic and I noticed that her covered eye was strange, it was a pale milky green, “Did that bastard do anything?”

She shook her head slightly and squeaked, “Nothin’ Ah ain’t suffered before, Mista.”

Suddenly, Mrs Onion bursted out of the mansion wielding a heavy machine gun on an old battle saddle followed by a group of middle aged stallions and mares wielding lever guns.

“The fuck’s happenin’ out here!?” the elderly mare shouted as she took aim at the soldiers and lit them up with shotgun shells instead of regular bullets.

Just as quickly as it had started, the battle was over, I helped Jubee up from our hiding spot and looked around. Nearly twenty Outcasts and seven Onions lay dead in the mud and cold rain.

Umeme was shouting at Ophia, Tahka, Mashhad and Q’ale, “What in the name of the First Caesar are you all doing here?”

“Helping Iron Slug, Sir,” Tahka answered.

“Well get back to the Castle, now, I have to do this alone.”

“With all due respect, Legate Umeme, we aren’t following your orders anymore, Sir,” Q’ale started, “We’re following Centurion Ophia’s, Sir.”

Umeme stared down at the mare with a mixture of anger and pride, Ophia placed her hoof on his shoulder, “Fuck honor, I’m not letting you die.”

The nice scene was interrupted when Mrs Onion came up, shouting, “Mind explainin’ exactly what happened?”

It was nearly day break when Umeme had finished explaining the situation as he saw it, Legate Eadadyiy wanted him dead or banished so he could become the next General when his father died, he was the only Legate now and in the best spot to take his father’s place. But he couldn’t kill Umeme himself because they were both Pompae and honor meant everything to their tribe and Umeme couldn’t go back and accuse the Legate because he was Speculatores and was without honor until he rescued Kaldi. Mrs Onion and her family sat around the main room listening to Umeme as he explained, the elderly mare simply nodded and by the end she spoke with her seven children, and decided on telling her husband upon his return and then they would decide. Until his return we were allowed to sleep in a couple of upstairs rooms, but we weren’t allowed to interact with any of her family, she glared at me specifically. It was close to noon when I woke up. At least my PipBuck told me it was noon, but the skies were still dark and it was raining even harder, the Onions had buried their dead and chucked the Outcasts Betrayers into the river after stripping them of their gear. I pulled on my gear and walked down the corridor, I saw Jubee helping some of the younger colts and fillies into a large bathtub. I offered the young mare a smile and she blushed sheepishly, I continued downstairs. Umeme, Ophia, Tahka, Mashhad, Q’ale and Argus were looking over a crudely hoof drawn map of the Northern Wastelands with one of the Onion children.

The large paper map was split into a few major locations, easternmost on the coast of the Celestial Sea was the Horseshoe Bay and Shoal’s Bay where Baltimare and Seaward Shoal were and Sokolov Bay where Stalliongrad and the ancient national border with Ma’Wenzi were with the Hayseed Swamp between, west of the Applelasia Mountains were large spans of grassland and prairies labeled as the Great Empty where the cities of Trottingham, the Twin Brothers and Foaledo were, southwest of the Great Empty was a massive forest and some mountains labeled as the Everfree Forest with the cities Chicoltgo and Monacolt and finally, westernmost on the coast of the Lunar Sea was Bowbreaker Bay where the cities of Vanhoover, New Horseleans, Tall Tale and Seaddle were. Looking over the map for a few moments my PipBuck pinged several times, looking down at the Map of Northern Equestria numerous blank markers had been placed in the approximate locations of the cities.

“So, that’s the short of it,” the Onion explained, gesturing a hoof at Junction Twenty, “Sturmkaller has made a deal t’ reinforce the Junction wit’ Red Eye Slavers from down south, but we’s ain’t seen ‘em as of yet.”

“No contact yet, interesting,” Umeme mused to himself, “Any other defences?”

“Standard, mostly heavy assault rifles, snipers, machine guns, shotguns, etc.”

“Any slaves?” Argus asked.

“They bein’ held in pens on the eastern bank of the Whitewash River, about thirty of ‘em, gon’ be presents for Red Eye, Ah’s reckon.”

“And the Old Guard?” Ophia asked.

“The Good Father seems t’ have made a deal with Sturmkaller, she keeps trade flowing wit’out disruption, she can sell slaves.”

“The Old Guard?” I asked, “Who’re they?”

Everypony looked at me for a moment before Ophia answered, “The Old Guard of Baltimare have protected the Horseshoe Bay for hundreds of years since Flash Magnus killed the Dragon God-King Bahamut, the knights that served under the Pegasus took up arms in defending the city from any hostility. They protected Baltimare during the War under Princess Luna’s Armies and they’ve kept the city mostly intact and raider free, but they hold this whole place in an iron hoof.”

“Ok, so who’s this Good Father fellow, some religious figure?”

Ophia visibly shivered before answering, “Lord Orion, legend says he built up Baltimare during the War, there’re also rumors his companies helped the Six Ministries with some of their projects, apparently he had such substantial wealth some started calling him the Seventh Ministry. He used his wealth to shield Baltimare somehow from the Balefire during the Last Day and hasn’t been seen since.”

“How does he control this area then?”

“His representatives, Fair Mother Artemis and Beloved Daughter Anaita lead the Old Guard in his stead from the Lonely Spyre of the Bay.”

“Why do you know so much?”

“I was in the Old Guard,” the mare said flatly, “Baltimare had a sizable Zebra population of every tribe in the suburb of Mondawmin for decades before the War, my ancestors served in the Old Guard like every citizen and during the War we changed our stripes into a myriad of colors to show our allegiance to the Princesses and Equestria, didn’t stop the Ministry of Morale from persecuiting us for  _ suspicious activity _ .”

The room got quiet for a moment before Umeme coughed into his hoof for attention, “All of you should get yourselves ready for tonight when Cattail returns this afternoon, Ophia and I will think of a plan.”

Later that afternoon, I was sitting in a wicker chair on the deck out of the rain looking out over the river, a few smaller Crawdads swam against the current and one of them stopped and looked in my direction for a moment before continuing on. There were some scattered gunshots in the distance that sounded like machine guns. The Onions had given me a jacket liner that I wore under my suit, I felt a bit warmer at least. I looked down at my PipBuck map and felt a chilling dread, Mom could’ve been anywhere by now, where would I even start? I noticed a creaking sound and I glanced up and saw Jubee timidly standing by the stairs.

“Ah’s sorry, Mista, Ah didn’t mean t’ interrupt yas work-”

I held up my hoof to quiet her, “No, you didn’t do anything wrong, come here.”

The mare hesitated for a long moment before timidly stepping over and sitting in a chair beside me, she timidly glanced up at my brush gun.

“Ya killed Jackchip?”

“Yeah, you knew him?”

“Ain’t no folk, pony or Zebra, in the Horseshoe Bay who ain’t git fucked over by ‘im or the Foalbanks.”

We sat in silence for a long time while I checked over my gear, I placed Light on the table and checked over my saddlebag, Jubee picked up Light and looked it over in her magic.

“Nice, isn’t it?” I asked.

The mare’s cheeks reddened slightly and she glanced away, carefully putting Light back, “Ah ain’t mean no harm, Mista-”

“Iron Slug,” I muttered, playing out Light’s magazine, “And it’s fine, Jubee, it isn't loaded anyway.”

We sat in a longer silence for a while, the rain continued tapping on the roof above us.

“What’s it like here?” I asked, waiting to fill the silence.

“Oh,” Jubee squeaked, timidly fidgeting with her braid, “it ain’t t’ bad Ah reckon, safe here.”

“Hmm ok, is it gonna stop raining?”

“Probably… a couple a days maybe,” Jubee squeaked, fidgeting with her jacket.

We sat in silence again before she asked something under the rain, I asked her to repeat it.

“Where ya from?” she squeaked, “Ah mean if it’s no trouble.”

“No, it’s just most folk I’ve dealt with so far usually notice that I’m a Stable Dweller is all.”

“Ya from City Seventeen? Grandpa an’ Uncle Fry do lots of business wit’ ‘em and the Garret Twins, they’re good folk.”

“The Garret Twins?”

“Yeah, one of the crime families in Foaledo, they run the Balefire Wrangler, mostly buy McZaffords’ booze from us, they’s better folk than the Riches.”

“And the Riches?”

“Bad folk, run the Desperado and sell slaves for anythin’, lead by Spoiled Rich, bunch of bastards. So are ya from City Seventeen?”

“No, my Stable’s up in the mountains, my Mom and I are the only ones who’ve come out since the Last Day.”

“Oh,” Jubee gasped, covering her mouth with her hooves, “Yer from that Stable!”

“That Stable?”

She nodded, “We attacked a Stable up in the mountains a long time ago, but we couldn’t git in.”

“Oh,” I remembered the skeletons outside Stable Fifty-Two, “Well trust me, you’re better off out here.”

There was another long pause before I asked, “Can you read?”

“Ah, uh no… not much,” she admitted quietly, looking down at the river, “Muh brain can’t handle letters an’ numbers none t’ good, they jump all over the page.”

“Dyslexia,” I muttered, she glanced up at me confused, “I think that’s what they call it when you can’t read well.”

“Grandpa says Ah had water in muh brain when Ah was born, makes me o’ no use t’ nopony.”

“Bullshit,” I muttered, startling her, “Just because you can’t read doesn’t mean you’re useless, what’re you good at?”

“Well-” she started but was interrupted when Junebug called for her, “Oh, sorry, yeah Ma?”

“Are you ready?” Umeme asked from the doorway, he had his gear on, “Cattail’s ready.”

We were on Cattail’s boat, it was a cramped metal thing with a large bladed engine that ran on spark batteries bolted to the back that loudly propelled us up the river and Cattail carefully guided us between debris. Rain whipped at us as we huddled together, I pulled my barding closer.

“Here’s the plan,” Umeme said over the rain and the engine, “Iron Slug, you’re going to pose as Red Eye’s representative and speak with Sturmkaller, distract her as long as possible, Uncle Argus and I will locate Aunt Kaldi, Ophia, Tahka and Q’ale will set up explosives around to cause distractions, we pull this off, we’ll be able to go home honor intact, any questions?”

I raised my hoof, “How the hell do you expect me to act like a slaver?”

“It’s simple, act threatening and everything’s beneath you, you’ll think of something.”

“Great,” I muttered.

“One other thing,” Ophia said, “You can’t take weapons into the Junction, I might be able to hide your pistol on you well enough that they won’t be able to find it when they search you, but don’t take it out unless shit hits the fan.”

I instinctively covered my ass with my hooves.

“Not there, pervert.”

After that humorous exchange, we rounded a bend in the river and came into view of Junction Twenty. If Dela Crow had been a town and the Castle was… well a castle, then Junction Twenty was nothing short of a fucking fortress. It was built upon a massive bridge of metal and concrete that spanned the length of the river just before it bends to the northwest toward the Twin Brothers. Probably a hundred makeshift buildings were built up the support pillars and cables with thousands of small lights dotted around and at the center of it all was a high tower with a flag fluttering in the wind and rain.

We pulled up to a small dock in the Swamp near the northern length of the Applelasia Mountains, we followed a path up to a crumbling four lane highway like the Long Stretch, we followed it through the blankets of rain and cold and reached a small collection of crumbling buildings before the western gate. We stopped in a building that used to be a post office so Ophia could hide Light in my suit and take it’s holster belt.

“Remember, you want them to think you’re with Red Eye, act like everything’s beneath you. Ready?”

I couldn’t find my voice so I just nodded. With that, they all pulled up their cloaks and disappeared, I swallowed hard and cautiously stepped up the road to the gate. Suddenly, a blinding light flashed on me and I had to block it with my foreleg to keep from going blind.

“Identify yourself!” somepony shouted.

“Hey is that a fuckin’ Stable Dweller?” a second voice shouted out, “Turn that damn light off, Mic.”

“I’m from Red Eye!” I shouted over the rain, “I’ve come to speak with Sturmkaller!”

The spot light shut off and I lowered my hoof, five Regulators stood up on the high reinforced rusting metal walls, an Earth pony, a Unicorn, a Zebra with green stripes and a strange red eagle/lion hybrid thing that must've been a Griffon. I counted two heavy assault rifles, one combat shotgun, a magical energy pistol and the Griffon held an incredibly strange rifle that my vast knowledge of Ironshod Firearms told me was most likely an IF-68, a 4.7mm Caseless Assault Rifle, it was mentioned as an experimental weapon system that supposedly never saw true combative use due to reliability issues with the ammunition being easily damaged. They must’ve fixed the issues in the two hundred years since the book's publication. 

A door in the gate opened and an Earth pony mare wearing blue combat armor with a black cloud and lightning bolt striking a pair of crossed heavy assault rifles painted on her shoulder pauldrons, she lifted a heavy assault rifle and stepped up cautiously.

“You’re from Red Eye?” she asked, notably lacking the Swampfolk accent.

“Yes,” I muttered, trying to seem disinterested, “Is there a problem?”

“Yeah there’s a fucking problem, you’re a whole season late.”

The Regulators up at the gate watched us suspiciously, I noticed a few shimmers climbing up the support beams, I had to distract them. 

Doing my best to seem like an angry slaver, I stepped toward the mare and growled, “And this is my problem because?”

“Well, we’ve been waiting for weeks and… the slaves are-” the mare stuttered slightly, clearly not expecting this despite being a slaver.

“My Master told me to speak with your leader, not with the common rabble, now take me to your leader or I’ll be forced to tell my Master that he will have to look elsewhere… perhaps the Riches up in Foaledo.”

“No! I’ll bring you to Sturmkaller, follow me,” the mare holstered her rifle and beckoned for me to follow her, inside the gates was a room with a reinforced window with a slot, a Zebra stallion with blue stripes and dreadlocks sat at a desk holding a clipboard with papers and a pencil, a number of gun racks and shelves with boxes lined the room behind him.

“Good evening, sir,” the Zebra said, “Name and occupation please.”

“Monty Banks, I represent Red Eye,” I said, quickly thinking of a fake name, damn DJ Pon3.

The Zebra jotted down the information, he pushed open the slot so the box was open to me, “Please place your weapons and ammunition into the box, we will return them when you leave.”

“What?” I asked, trying to sound annoyed.

“It’s for safety reasons, sir, can’t have the slaves getting guns, right?”

I glared at the Zebra for a moment longer before a gun cocking got my attention, a couple of Regulators leveled magical energy rifles at me, “You will have to leave your gear here, safety reasons, you will get everything back when you leave.”

I glared at the guards for a moment longer before I unclasped my brush gun, holster bandolier and floated out the spare bullets from my saddlebag, I sweated slightly when the guards patted me down, but they let me go. The Zebra handed me a ticket with some numbers on it, stuffing it in my saddlebag. I followed the mare through the door and out into Junction Twenty.

The Junction’s buildings were built up two, three, four and even five high forming a long wide corridor that blocked out the rain and cold with walkways, stairs, ramps and pulley lifts. Lights were strung up all over the place some were advertising bars and stores and brothels with mares and stallions in scant clothing called out services for low prices. Dozens and dozens of ponies, Zebras and a few Griffons were walking around going about their business or were up in the walkways, a number of them were wearing matching blue combat armor with the same black cloud and lightning bolt striking crossed heavy assault rifles. The mare lead me through the crowds to the tower in the middle of the bridge, we climbed steep stairs, when we reached the fourth landing, a Pegasus Regulator threw a sex slave over the railing of the landing, she screamed all the way down into the crowds dozens of feet below.

“Luna dammit, Daven, she cost good caps,” my guide berated the stallion, he flicked his wings at her in a way that must’ve been insulting.

We made our way up more stairs till finally we made it to the tower top, she opened a door for me.

“Sturmkaller’s busy with a personal task, she’ll be with you as soon as possible.”

“Hey, what’s your name?” I asked out of curiosity.

The mare looked at me cautiously before answering, “Bobbin Black Apple.”

“Black Apples, they grow food, yes?”

“Yeah,” Bobbin muttered.

I stepped inside the room and the door closed behind me. The room was pretty small and loosely resembled an office with a squat wardrobe, a couple of chairs, a coffee table, a wooden desk with a terminal and a framed photograph. I stepped around the desk, the photo was of a young filly hugging an older stallion, both were Pegasi and the edges of the photo were chard slightly like a part of it had been burned away. I tapped the terminal keyboard and the screen flashed on and a password was required, I racked my head for all that I knew about Sturmkaller before deciding to hack into it. I’m not the best at computers and hacking them was tricky for me, but I had no choice.

And I was slightly disappointed when it turned out to be  _ Wind _ , inside was a number of nonsensical corrupted entries, but at the end was a few entries presumably written by Sturmkaller.

_ I’ve been down here for thirty years, seven months, three weeks and six days, I wasn’t even fifteen and yet I was judged no better than Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo. _

_ All for allowing my commanding officer to get himself killed by that fucking Windigo. _

_ Father declared me unworthy our name, _

_ Mother couldn’t even look at me during the trial, _

_ Sturmrise was grinning with glee as I was slapped in chains and dragged away. _

_ I still feel the branding melting my hide and flesh, _

_ I still hear the roaring laughter as I lost my voice in silent screams, _

_ I still see the surface as it barreled up at me as I fell flailing toward the beast ridden ruins of Chicoltgo. _

_ I still remember the fear in that Everfree Beastlord’s eyes as I drove my spear through the gaps of his armor and into his lungs, _

_ I still hear the mocking catcalls and taunting slurs from those bandits in Foaledo, _

_ I still feel the bullets shot by that Blackraven sniper that pierced my wing grounding me. _

_ And yet I still see the warming smile of Rose when I stumbled bleeding into the clinic in City Seventeen’s courtyard, _

_ I still remember the pride and honor that radiated off of Crusader Bryght Stehl as he killed Tawa Sunspear in Trottingham, _

_ I still feel the bitter cold ocean spray of Bowbreaker Bay as we fought the Nuckelavee alongside Gawdyna Grimfeathers. _

_ I still feel the warmth and the love in Iudex Umbaril’s eyes fade as he died from the manticore slash in his side. _

_ I’ve been down here for thirty years, seven months, three weeks and six days and yet I feel as though my end is nearing.  _

_ Let it come, I will not go gentle into that Darkness. _

I sat back in the chair and thought about what I just read, Sturmkaller was a slaver and yet, to be blamed for a crime she didn’t even commit? I’d probably become evil myself. I closed out of the terminal and sat down in a chair and waited for what felt like a good hour before the door blew open and a Pegasus mare downing a large bottle of whiskey stepped in.

The mare wore an old beige Enclave uniform, but it was incredibly sloppy, the few medals and dozens of ribbons she’d earned were defaced and the single copper bars on her collar tabs were tarnished and rusting with a very slight green patina, a scratched up name tag was pinned above her asymmetrical breast pocket,  _ Sturmkaller. _ She had a necklace made from pistol and rifle bullet casings with a couple of metal dog tags with luminescent blue squares and black rubber edges, one had a large bullet hole in it. An IF-33 12.7mm pistol was holstered at her side below her cutie mark, a black cloud and lightning bolt that almost looked burned into her hide. Her long blue fushia mane was in a sloppy tri braided and tied with a scrap of red ribbon. I was reminded of the Enclave Officer from my weird dream.

“You!” she growled, throwing her bottle over her shoulder, “You got some real fucking nerve to show up!”

“You must be Sturmkaller,” I said, standing up and offering a hoof, “My Master sends his regards.”

The mare grumbled something under her breath as she sat down in the chair opposite me, “Getting down to business, I have about a hundred following me with another fifty up near the Twin Brothers, twenty-eight slaves are ready to go-”

Suddenly a stallion stepped in carrying a platter with a couple of liquor bottles on it, he silently placed it on the coffee table and turned to leave.

Sturmkaller picked up a glass and threw it at the stallion, who caught it, “Duke, if your brain was dynamite, you wouldn’t have enough to blow your fucking hat off!”

The stallion closed the door and Sturmkaller continued, “Anyways, how long can we expect Red Eye’s reinforcements?”

“Well, from what I’ve seen so far, I think we would be better off buying from-”

The mare slammed the bottle hard enough against the table to crack, spraying dark liquid all over, “So that’s how it’s going to be?”

“Well, I’d hardly say that-,” I started.

She lifted the bottle up, brandishing it’s jagged edge at me, “You think I enjoyed it when my loving, caring, spiteful big sister held me down as they burned away my cutie mark and then cast me down from their fucking Eden?” she bitterly spat, “Do you think I enjoy this toxic hellscape? Do you think that I haven’t made sacrifices to whip these fucking carravan guards into proper slavers?!”

“Killing the Nuckelavee must’ve been interesting,” I cautiously commented, staring down at the bottle.

Sturmkaller threw back her head in cruel laughter, “You can’t kill the Nuckelavee, no more than a windigo. What do you know of that bloody kir anyway?”

“I know that it lives in Bowbreaker Bay, but nothing else.”

“Where’re you from anyway?” the mare lowered the bottle and asked, staring down at my suit, “Didn’t think that Red Eye worked with other Stable Dwellers.”

“It’s not something I like to talk about, I’m sure you understand.”

Strumkaller leaned closer, “Then tell me.”

“I was lost in the Heartland,” I started, quickly coming up with a story that sounded plausible, “One of his slavers found me one night and brought me to him. He offered me a choice, tell him where my stable was or suffer beyond anything possible. It was an easy choice.”

We talked for close to an hour, Sturmkaller seemed to calm down slightly, she talked about the Regulators, about how she took over and compared it to Red Eye’s own rise to power, she asked about what it was like to serve the slaver king and I quickly came up with plausible answers. When the bottle was long since dry, Sturmkaller stood and sauntered slightly around me.

“Say, why not stay for the night?” She trailed a wing feather along my shoulder, “We can give your master his slaves in the morning.”

“Sorry,” I said, standing up, “But I don’t mix business with pleasure.”

“I didn’t ask,” Before I could react, the crazy mare grabbed my collar and threw me against a wall, “Do you think I'm a drunken fool? I know for a fact that Red Eye gives away his Unicorns to the Goddess, now who are you really?”

She leaned far too close and pressed her lips against mine, I tasted the sour liquor as her tongue slipped into my mouth. Her lips and tongue dominated mine as her wings groped my crotch, I struggled to break free but she was too persistent. Eventually, she broke her assault and stared up into my eyes and her face flashed with a dawning of foggy realization, a wing reached up and flicked away some of my mane and her realization turned into cruel dread.

She tried to say something multiple times before she whispered, “Wait, I know your eyes.”

She took a step back and covered her mouth with her wings, “You’re Rose’s son?”

I blinked a couple of times before asking, “You know my Mom?”

“She didn’t mention me?” she asked, anger sparking behind her eyes, “I’m one of her only friends left in this dead world and she didn’t mention me?”

I shook my head and she grabbed her chair and threw it into the wall.

“Celestia’s fucking soaking cunt,” And I thought my profanity was getting bad, “I was there when you were squeezed out, I helped you get to that fucking hole in the mountains and yet she didn’t even bother to talk about me?!”

I shook my head again.

The mare shouted bitterly as she toppled a dresser, “After all the fun we fucking had together!?”

“What’re you talking about?” I asked, dodging a glass that flew past me and broke against the wall.

“Oh, she has you drinking that punch, huh,” Sturmkaller shouted, “I met Rose back in City Seventeen decades ago, she never told me where she was truely from, but I knew she couldn’t possibly be a native, no she was far too kind to me.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, Mom and all of my ancestors came from Stable Fifty-Two, no this Pegasus was clearly lying to get me off guard.

“Did my Mom come through here?”

Sturmkaller nodded, “Yeah, Rose came through, we talked for the better part of a day, learning about what has happened since you and she were sealed in that tomb, we had a fun night rekindling our old friendship before she left. I never thought you’d come here so soon.”

“Did she mention where?”

“No,” she hung her head slightly, “She mentioned that you were still in the Stable and then she left for the West.”

We stood there in silence for a long time before I asked, “Did you know my father?”

The mare stared up at me for a moment before nodding, “I never knew him personally, doubt anypony could. But he was a stallion of unyielding vision and Rose almost worshipped him like the Good Father or the Goddesses. It’s funny, really, Rose said as you grew up, you developed a look in your eyes that reminded her of him.”

I thought over her words for a moment, Mom never told me about my dad, not even his name and yet this slaver, this old friend of Mom’s just told me that he was comparable to the Goddesses? Just one more question for Mom when I found her.

“What was his name?” I asked.

The Pegasus was about to say something, but then a thunderous bellowing horn that almost shook the room called our attention. Sturmkaller almost flew out the door and through the heavy rain we looked toward the East, the shadows of a massive anvil shaped pre war vehicle almost bigger than the Junction loomed hundreds of feet above the ground supported on four massive thunder clouds as it slowly drifted toward us, a name lit up on its bow,  _ Song of the North. _ Dozens of smaller air vehicles shot out from the clouds and swooped down.

“Battle stations!” Sturmkaller shouted down at her Regulators.

After a moment, the east gate exploded inward in a shower of sparks and splinters and dozens of soldiers wearing matching silver combat armor wielding a mix of conventional and magical energy weapons thundered in through the smoke and fire. The Regulators got behind cover and returned fire on their attackers but they were overrun easily.

The Pegasus grabbed my collar, “Listen, go get to safety, the Old Guard don’t fuck around.”

“What about you?” I asked, she stepped into the spare side room.

“I’ve been expecting their retaliation for a while, now go!”

The Junction was utter chaos as I sprinted down the soaking and slick stairs with dozens of Regulators and other folk toward the main floor. Bullets and magical energy bolts flew past me as I ducked into a side building on one of the upper floors, where was Umeme and the others? Quickly thinking, I picked up a heavy assault rifle from a dead Regulator and after checking its magazine, I stepped out into the carnage. I aimed at an Old Guard who had climbed up to the floor just below me and shot a few S.A.T.S. aided bullets at them. The rifle kicked into my shoulder as the first two bullets missed, but the third, fourth and fifth bullets hit their mark in his neck and back, killing him and causing him to slip and fall over the railing into the crowds below. I ducked back into cover as a bullet grazed my shoulder pauldron, a few Regulators blew past me. Suddenly, there was a loud cracking as the building I was in started moving. I jumped up and sprinted for the door just as the building toppled into the river. Time slowed as I jumped at the last moment and flew through the air, slamming into the walkway I frantically grabbed at anything as I started slipping backwards, but I couldn’t get a perch. Suddenly, a mouth grabbed my collar and helped lift me onto the walkway, Umeme stood over me.

“Come on!” he shouted over the rain and gun fire, helping me stand, “This is no place to die!”

“Did you find Kaldi?” I shouted, wiping some of my mane out of my eyes.

“Yes, she’s at the docks now, I came back for you!”

Without wasting any more time, we ran down the stairs, shooting Regulators and Old Guard alike as we reached the main floor, we broke into a sprint for the west gate, my new rifle slung over my shoulder slapping against my side. A Regulator fell from an upper floor and planted ahead of me, I quickly reached down with my telekinesis and grabbed a few of his spare magazines and stored them in my saddlebag. Above us a couple of Pegasi wearing silver Enclave power armor swooped down and fired multiple beams of blue magical energy killing dozens of folks. Umeme and I ducked as the Pegasi swoopt by and came around for another pass. Suddenly a third Pegasi wearing blackened Enclave power armor fired multiple bolts of fiery orange magical energy at the silver counterparts and struck one that spiraled down and crashed into a building a couple of floors up, showering the main floor in splinters and smoke.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw a few air vehicles swoop down beyond the west gate, I grabbed Umeme by his cloak and quickly pulled him into a side alley just before the gate exploded inward, killing dozens of folk.

We peered around the corner, a couple dozen Old Guard wielding heavy weapons piled in through the newly destroyed gate and gunned down any Regulators who stood against them. A tall impossibly slender pony stepped in through the smoke and fire, he was clad in ancient looking silver power armor draped in a battle ragged hooded cloak of dark blue fabric with a golden dragon skull crossed with a spear and a rainbow colored lightning bolt. He stared out at the crowds through the black cloudy visor that reflected back the flickering fire around him. A cloud of golden magic glowed around his long armored spiraled horn and the cape was pulled to the side revealing a pair of long armored mechanical wings that flapped strong gusts of wind that sputtered the flames away from the gates.

“The Soul of Judgement,” Umeme gawked.

“The what?” I asked, glancing down at the stallion.

“One of the Old Guards’ greatest champions, he defends the Lonely Spyre of the Bay, what’s he doing here?”

Suddenly, a second pony stepped in through the smoke, a Pegasus mare wearing a pure white uniform that matched her milky white coat with a heavy overcoat of dark blue wool with the same dragon skull and crossed spear and rainbow lightning bolt on her collar. Her long pale golden mane with a single fiery bronze streak flowed behind her with an unseen breeze and her large heliotrope eyes looked out from her shiny black half gas mask. A 357 Magnum revolver was strapped into a holster on her shoulder belt.

An unnatural silence fell and the chaos halted, the Old Guard knelt respectively to the mare as Sturmkaller swooped down and cautiously approached her.

“Beloved Daughter Anaita, to what do I owe this… untimely pleasure?”

The mare, this Beloved Daughter Anaita, looked around at the corpses that littered the Junction around her almost like she wasn’t used to seeing death before.

“DO NOT WASTE MY TIME, STURMKALLER, YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHY I AM HERE!” she replied with a chillingly loud voice that nearly shook the whole bridge and had a similar accent as the voice from Mom’s memory orb, “WHERE IS DOCTOR OBSIDIAN ROSE!”

“I’m sorry, but who?”

“DO NOT TEMPT YOUR FATE, DASHITE!” Anaita drowned out anything that Sturmkaller could’ve said, “I KNOW THAT DOCTOR ROSE WAS SPOTTED IN YOUR PRESENCE NOT BUT THREE DAYS AGO!”

Anaita stepped closer to the Pegasus and glared down at her, not unlike a disappointed parent, she said in a far lower voice that I could just barely hear, “My Beloved Father may have tolerated your pathetic childish antics with the Regulators because you kept trade flowing, but enough is enough. Tell me where my lord father’s old friend has gone or you will be but a footnote in the pages of Baltimare history.”

Sturmkaller stood there silently for far too long, she looked back to her few remaining Regulators, before she turned back to the Beloved Daughter.

“You want to know something, Anaita?” she asked, giving her a sly smile, “Have I ever told you the definition of  _ Insanity _ ?”

The world almost slowed to a standstill as the armored Pegasus blasted the mare with bolts of orange magical energy that were blocked by a golden magical shield generated by the Soul of Judgement.

The shield melted away slightly for Anaita to address her troops, “No Regulator survives!”

“For the Beloved Daughter and the Promised Prince!” The Old Guard shouted as one.

The bridge erupted into unabated chaos once again, the Old Guards on both sides opened fire into the crowds, the few Regulators tried to fight them off as Sturmkaller blasted the Old Guard around Anaita. Umeme grabbed my hoof and we sprinted out into the carnage, we kept low and ducked and dived past the Regulators as they were slaughtered without remorse. I looked up just in time to see the Soul of Judgement stand back on his hindlegs and reach out his forehooves, they transformed into fists with five mechanical fingers each, small balls of brilliant golden magic manifested into a massive archery bow nearly as tall as he was, a second ball of golden magic manifest into a long arrow nocked into the bow string and pulled it back to behind his armored cheek between two of his fingers of his off hoof.

“Guilty!” a low ancient voice thundered out through the helmet as the armored stallion loosed the arrow that sliced through Sturmkaller like her armor was little more than wet paper.

Umeme and I managed to get through the gate and into the pouring rain with a few dozen other ponies, Zebras and Griffons. I looked over my shoulder, the Soul of Judgement lifted his bow and nocked another arrow.

“Guilty!” the giant thundered as the arrow loosed.

“Look out!” I shouted.

I pushed Umeme out of the way just as the arrow sliced through the rain like a scalpel through flesh, the world slowed to a near crawl as the arrowhead sliced through my cheek, my eye, over my brow and through my mane. My body spiraled through the air and rain from the force, but I didn’t feel any pain as the golden magic burned away my flesh.

I didn’t feel my body slam into the muddy road, quenching the flames away.

I didn’t feel the folk sprinting around and over me.

I opened my eye and strained to look up, Umeme stood there staring down at me for a painfully long moment before he sprinted off with the crowd into the night and rain.

As the darkness took me as I laid there in the bloody mud and cold rain, a single thought flickered in my brain like a dying flame.

I failed.

  
**Level Up:** Mare Killer: You deal 10% more damage against female opponents. Outside of combat, you might come across special dialogue options, so watch out.


End file.
